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Controversial U.K. Mayor Cuts Gay Pride Funding, Pledges End to Political Correctness in Government

By Hilary White

DONCASTER, UK, September 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The recently elected mayor of Doncaster, in South Yorkshire, has infuriated Britain's politically powerful homosexualist lobby by attempting to withhold local funding for this year's Gay Pride celebrations. The funding for this year's event in June went through, but Mayor Peter Davies, a member of the English Democrat party and the father of Tory MP Philip Davies, has scrapped all future funding for the annual Gay Pride event.

"I'm not a homophobe," he said, "but I don't see why council taxpayers should pay to celebrate anyone's sexuality."

Davies is only the second mayor of Doncaster to have been elected directly by a popular vote rather than by council members. He campaigned on a popular platform, that has reportedly alarmed the political classes on both the Labour and Tory sides of the House, in which he pledged to "stamp out political correctness" in every area of Doncaster's local government.

To accomplish this, Davies has recruited the group Campaign Against Political Correctness (CAPC) to consult on his planned reforms. A spokesman for the CAPC, John Midgley, said that "people are crying out" for an end to the wave of politically correct policies in Britain. "We commissioned a survey by ICM," Midgley said, "that said 80 per cent of people are fed up to the back teeth with it."

Davies promised to end council funding for "politically correct initiatives" and to "scrap politically correct non-jobs" such as "community cohesion officers" and "encourage the former employees to seek meaningful employment."

In his first week in office, Davies fulfilled his promises by cutting his own salary from £73,000 to £30,000; reducing the number of councillors from 63 to 21, saving the town £800,000 a year. He immediately announced plans to reduce council tax by 3 per cent and got rid of the mayoral limousine. He ended a "twinning" arrangement with five towns around the world, which he described as "just for people to fly off and have a binge at the council's expense."

While campaigning earlier this year, and in the midst of a national pandemic of violent youth crime, Davies, who is a retired school teacher, called for harsher punishments for "young thugs." As a founding member of the Campaign for Real Education, Davies has pressed for restoration of traditional methods in schools that he says will reduce crime and restore Britain's once-legendary  public order. 

He also called on the government to withdraw Britain from the European Union "in order to save billions of pounds each year and return control of the country's affairs to our own parliament."

Calling him the UK's "most gloriously un-PC" mayor, the Daily Mail's Robert Hardman asked, "Who should be most worried about his success: Labour or the Tories? Because his message threatens both."

Hardman commented, "To the shock and dismay of many local councillors and MPs, most of Westminster and the entire Government, the assiduously straight-talking Mr. Davies has just become one of the most powerful politicians in Britain."

Columnist and pundit Gerald Warner, writing for the Daily Telegraph's blog, called Davies's tenure "the beginning of the end for political correctness" and a sign that "the counter-revolution has begun." His agenda, Warner wrote, "against all the tenets of consensual British politics, consists of doing what the public wants."

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