I was born and brought up in Newport East and attended Newport High School. I worked in the civil service and later studied at Cardiff University, becoming a teacher of German and French.

Having taught in several comprehensive schools in Wales I believe that an excellent education should be available to all our children, regardless of where they live or how well off their parents are.

Appalling cuts in Youth Service facilities have left the field wide open for drug dealers and anti social behaviour which many residents of our estates find difficult to cope with.

Formerly many schools were open in the evenings as youth centres and it cost almost nothing to use the swimming pools.

Maindee pool should have been supported by Newport Council and should never have been allowed to be destroyed by vandalism. I hope that plans for it to be restored for use by the community will succeed.

I have been a political activist since I first joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1962.

In the 1970s I fought against the proposals to build a nuclear power station at Portskewett. Unfortunately the spectre looms again and we face threats of nuclear power stations on our doorstop.

Hinkley Point, just across the river from Newport, is to have a new reactor and much has been made of the news that a new one will be built at Wylfa on Anglesy. We have not forgotten Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and scientists still have no idea what to do with radioactive waste.

I would like to see all nuclear weapons scrapped, including Trident, and the money saved spent on the National Health Service.

I believe that our troops should be brought home from Afghanistan immediately.

Under this New Labour government we have been constantly at war - Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and new battles are waiting in the wings. It is time that time that we gave consideration to a peaceful future and invested those billions of pounds in health and education services.

The government were swift to bail out the banks with taxpayers’ money and still didn’t put in place proper regulation. Hence bankers are still claiming hefty bonuses and the taxpayers are still picking up the bill.

Nothing has been done to help small businesses have more easy access to finance, house repossessions rising rapidly. None of this is helping the British economy.

This is the third time I have contested this constituency and I hope that the people of Newport East will give me their support.