Liberal Democrats select Iain Donaldson to fight Blackley and Broughton

Manchester University Research Administrator and Former City Councillor for 19 years, Iain Donaldson has been selected by the Liberal Democrats as their Candidate for the Blackley and Broughton Constituency to challenge the Labour Party's arch-brexiteer and climate change denying MP.

Iain has lived in Manchester all his life and is concerned about the damage that Brexit will do to our city, which is dependent on being in the EU for many jobs, for our world leading sciences and for our commerce, trade and toursim, and also the loss of influence that the UK will have when it comes to tackling climate change, an issue where Labour speaks fine words and passes some credible policy, but takes absolutely no action.

"It is over thirty years since I got involved in local politics, fighting to stop Labour and North West Water destroying open green space to build a business park. Today air-pollution in our City is a major problem, and yet Labour are building car-parks in our city centre rather than building a traffic network to enable us to leave the car at home and travel by public transport. As a public transport user I see daily how crowded our trams are, how slowly the traffic moves in and out of our city, and how long it takes to get anywhere. We need to get our public transport moving, and particularly we need to work on creating safe routes for cyclists so we can get out of vehicles alltogether."

"It is good to see so many people heeding Greta Thunburg these days, but it is over 20 years now since I persuaded Labour to make it policy in Manchester to stop selling water in plastic bottles from council premises, we are still waiting for Labour to implement this policy. We need action to save our planet and the Liberal Democrats are committed to taking the action needed to reduce plastic waste and increase renewable energy, but we also need to tackle heat loss in our homes with a massive national funding for home insulation."