Penrith and The Border is a fantastic area to live! Many of its residents have retired here and live happy and comfortable lives in our wonderful communities, amongst some of the best countryside in the world.

I've travelled all over the world and there's nowhere like this. Nowhere with the blend of scenery and culture that we find in the old counties of Westmorland and Cumberland.

If however, you're not retired and/or not wealthy then life here may not be quite so pleasant. Our area has a lack of well paid jobs, affordable housing and a very poor public transport infrastructure. These three issues come up again and again as I travel around Penrith and The Border. They only vary in the order of importance. Alston tells me that transport is their biggest issue whereas other areas would put jobs or housing at the top of their list. There are no easy answers (despite what other candidates will tell you) but here are some of the ways forward.

Transport: The County Council provides some of our rural bus services but does not get enough money to link many of our communities. Our transport system is fragmented with no proper co-operation between train and bus services. The UK needs a strategy for public transport in rural areas. Much of the problem stems from the deregulation of the buses and Liberal Democrats would return to a situation which obliged operators to use profitable services to subsidise rural services in sparsley populated areas.

We must fight to retain a good high speed rail service between Penrith and the Capital. New high speed rail links are no use to us if they don't stop in both Penrith and Carlisle.

Housing: We lose a high proportion of our young people because of the high price of our housing. This is directly related to the absence of a substantial rental sector in our area. Council houses used to provide a stabilising effect on the market, anchoring prices of family homes. The removal of this sector by the Thatcher government led to the present situation where a small family home can cost 10 times a typical salary in our area.