Jill Hope, Lib Dem PPC for Milton Keynes North

Jill Hope Parliamentary Candidate for MK North

Jill Hope was educated at Southampton University (B.A. English) and The City of London Business School (Postgraduate Diploma in Business Studies - law, accountancy, statistics and economics). After working in the NHS, in women's magazines and many years working as a corporate banker for HSBC, Jill Hope was until recently a Start-Up Business Advisor, helping people to set up their own businesses, at a time when jobs are so scarce for young and older people.

Married with 4 children ranging in age from 18 to 28, Jill Hope is interested in education and the impact of student debt on young adults. "What makes me particularly angry" says Jill "is the fact that the Labour Ministers who have imposed tuition fees and top up fees on our children are the very people who had the benefit of a free and grant-aided university education themselves. They have reached positions of power and now they have pulled the ladder up. I think that is unforgivable."

Having fought as a Parliamentary Candidate in Harborough Constituency in both 2001 and 2005, and having moved the Lib Dem vote forward on both occasions, Jill has now been adopted as Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the new seat of Milton Keynes North, just 3 miles south of her home in the village of Milton Malsor.

The new seat of Milton Keynes North is currently held by the Conservatives, but the boundary changes for the 2010 General Election have changed the seat to one that would be a Labour seat if the 2005 election were to be rerun on the new boundaries.

Jill Hope commented: "It's been red/blue blue/red for 65 years and the country is in a terrible mess. People on the doorsteps of Milton Keynes from Wolverton to Willen from Newport Pagnell to Oldbrook are telling me that they don't know who to vote for on 6th May, whoever they may have voted in the past.

"First of all I would remind people that there are two elections on 6th May - local elections for Milton Keynes Council in some parts of the City, and a General Election.

"People I have spoken to on the doorstep tell me that they like the Council, they feel the Lib Dem administration is doing a good job, and that they like living in Milton Keynes with its Council tax which is lower than so many surrounding Councils, mainly Conservative-led. The message for the local elections is simple - if you think we're doing a good job, please vote for us to carry on.

Jill Hope talks to young people in Central Milton Keynes

"As far as the General Election is concerned, vote with your heart. If you really want another 5 years of Labour, vote accordingly. If you feel that you trust David Cameron to sort everything out and help everyone, vote accordingly. If you are fed up with the two larger Parties because they sent us into the illegal war with Iraq, because they ignored the Lib Dem warnings about excess credit and demutualising the Building Societies, because they've both had 65 years and have failed, vote Lib Dem and let us pull the strings to change this corrupt and dishonoured Parliament forever."

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