Author Archives: joshmacmp

Please find below my Politics Column for this week’s Whitehaven News. Change. That’s what we need after 14 years of Tory government. They promised the earth to places like West Cumbria to win votes and then abandoned us without delivering. Now they’re doing the same again and expect you to believe it’ll be different. ThereContinue reading “Change you can believe in”

The Whitehaven News asked me a series of questions to help local voters get to know me a little better. My answers are below! Family status: Married with two lazy lurchers Education: Comprehensive schools in Rochdale and then Dumfriesshire, undergraduate at Edinburgh University and Master’s degree at Manchester. Last job: I led a landmark independentContinue reading “My interview with the Whitehaven News”

Josh MacAlister kicked off his campaign to become the next MP for the new constituency of Whitehaven and Workington over the weekend with an event at his campaign office in Workington town centre. In a speech to local people and Labour activists, Josh set out his first steps for the local area, which includes: Labour’sContinue reading “Josh MacAlister launches campaign to become Labour MP for Whitehaven and Workington”

My letter to the Whitehaven News, 13/05/2024 Hundreds of you have told me how hard it is to see a GP in my GP access survey. So I took the opportunity to spend a morning alongside staff working in Fellview Healthcare GP practices in Egremont and Cleator Moor to find out from the front lineContinue reading “Spending time in the trenches with our GPs”

Back in March I wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, asking her department to grant the request from Cumbria Education Trust – which runs Whitehaven and Workington academies – for funding to build a new dedicated sixth form space across Whitehaven and Workington to accommodate increased capacity for post-16Continue reading “Disappointing response from Minister on school places request”

Josh MacAlister, Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Whitehaven and Workinton, has written to all bus operators in Cumbria calling on them to step up and deliver new bus services. Cumberland Council launched a tender last week for operators to provide new and improved bus services, including reinstating the no. 22 route between Whitehaven, Egremont, Cleator andContinue reading “Parliamentary candidate calls on bus operators to ‘step up’”

Local runner Gary McKee, dubbed the ‘Marathon Man’ after he ran a marathon every day for a year and raised over £1 million for Macmillan cancer charity, has teamed up with Josh MacAlister, Labour’s Parliamentary candidate for Whitehaven and Workington, to call for improvements to cancer care in West Cumbria. The call follows the releaseContinue reading “‘Marathon Man’ and Parliamentary candidate join forces to call for improvements to cancer care in West Cumbria”

Last week the government released data on the amount of sewage dumped into our waterways by water companies in 2023 and it turned out to be the worst year on record. Sewage is being dumped in local becks, rivers and the sea at more than 50 sites right across West Cumbria. Into the Irish SeaContinue reading “It’s time to stop the sewage”

– Business and political leaders call on National Grid to rethink plans A group of business and political leaders in Cumbria have joined forces to ask the National Grid ESO to look again at their plans for the future electricity system in the UK as it overlooks vital capacity needs in West Cumbria. National GridContinue reading ““Put West Cumbria on the grid””

We’ve secured a major victory in our campaign to improve local bus services! The campaign, launched in December last year, sought improvements to existing services and for the return of some vital axed routes which left whole communities cut off from the public transport network. I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport demandingContinue reading “Better Buses are coming!”