UK Column News EXTRA - 29th January 2024.

Brian Gerrish, Alex Thomson, Mark Anderson and Artwell in our relaxed UKC News Extra conversation and learn more about Artwell and the importance of simple local activism in a uni-party world. Duration - 37 minutes.
This UK COLUMN NEWS EXTRA has been made Public, as the issues discussed here will ultimately affect many more UK people if the agenda is allowed to spread unchecked.
Please read the rest of the description below.

Become a UK Column member to get access to our additional News Extra coverage, a more relaxed, sometimes in-depth, often funny and wry look at events.

www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-extra-29th-january-2024.
In a special UK Column Extra we are joined by Chaka Artwell, better known to his friends as Artwell, an enthusiastic activist from Oxford. Highly knowledgeable about his local council and their activities, Artwell has recently been challenging implementation of the Oxford LTN Low Traffic Neighbourhood. He describes this initiative as East Oxford’s road block and anti-car policy, and he highlights that by shutting off side road connections with the main arterial routes through the city, the council is creating mayhem for drivers and local people alike.

Artwell is also deeply concerned about the loss of wider freedoms in our Constitutional Monarchy and he sees that Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals are frequently to be found at the core of Oxford’s, and other councils’ policies. Supposedly designed to make the lives of local people better, in practice, they quickly seem to do the opposite.

Artwell’s upbeat and challenging approach to contentious matters within Oxford recently made him the focus of an Oxford Mail article, written by politics reporter Albert Tait. In what should have been an article recognising the importance of Artwell’s questions and challenges to unwelcome Oxford Council policies, Tait attempted to smear Artwell and his former hard work as a prospective parliamentary candidate, by dismissively calling him a ‘Former MP Wanabee.’

In fact Artwell had discovered that so sensitive was Oxford Council to his challenges, his emails, setting out questions that he had wanted to ask at formal council meetings, had been ’disappearing’ into an ‘un-monitored' council inbox. Without Council acknowledgement of his questions, Artwell was subsequently denied his rightful attendance and participation as a member of the public in those supposedly democratic meetings.

Please join Brian Gerrish, Alex Thomson, Mark Anderson and Artwell in our relaxed UKC News Extra conversation and learn more about Artwell and the importance of simple local activism in a uni-party world.

https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/uk-column-news-extra-29th-january-2024