Government
Lowestoft is the major settlement in Waveney District Council. It is a former municipal borough, having lost this status in 1974, although it retains a ceremonial mayor. The mayor of Lowestoft is elected by councillors on an annual basis. Suffolk County Council is the local authority.
The town is part of the Waveney parliamentary constituency and currently represented at Westminster by Conservative Peter Aldous. Former M.P.s include Bob Blizzard, David Porter and Jim Prior, a cabinet minister and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the Thatcher governments, who also represented the former constituency of Lowestoft. For European Union elections Lowestoft forms part of the East of England constituency.
For district election purposes, Lowestoft is divided into ten electoral wards, with Carlton Colville treated as a separate electoral area. Harbour, Kirkley, Normanston, Pakefield, St Margarets and Whitton wards elect three councillors each, with Carlton, Gunton and Corton, Oulton and Oulton Broad wards electing two district councillors. Of the 48 council seats in the district, 26 represent wards within Lowestoft, with three more representing Carlton Colville. In 2010 the council changed to a Whole Council election process, with all seats on the council elected at one set of elections every four years. The most recent district council elections were on 5th May 2011 at which the Labour party won 19 of the Lowestoft seats, a gain of four seats, concentrated in the central areas of the town. The Conservative party won six seats with one Independent candidate retaining their seat in Oulton ward.
At Suffolk County Council, Lowestoft and its immediate surrounding area are represented by eight councillors, split equally between four electoral divisions–Gunton, Lowestoft South, Oulton and Pakefield. For county council elections Pakefield division includes Carlton Colville. Elections take place every four years, with the most recent elections in June 2009. Seven of Lowestoft's county councillors represent the Conservative party, with South Lowestoft electing a UK Independence Party councillor in 2009.
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Famous quotes containing the word government:
“The scope of modern government in what it can and ought to accomplish for its people has been widened far beyond the principles laid down by the old “laissez faire” school of political rights, and the widening has met popular approval.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)