What do your local
‘CONDEMS’ do for you?
After the last meeting of the Town Council – we know – it’s
very little – we don’t doubt Councillor Daley’s passion for all things
Cramlington but we’re sure that the very same Councillor Daley refused to vote
for a motion that backed continued investment in the South East. We’d like to
tell you the same about Councillor Flux but he’s gone missing.
The Labour agenda for the South East is very simple. We
intend to support the area of Northumberland which is home to over 50% of the
population and we intend to make sure towns like Cramlington get their fair
share.
Compare with the culture of ‘abstention’ from your local
ConDems who’re silent when the rural cousins like Councillor Peter Jackson,
Tory MP Guy Opperman of Hexham and Tory wannabe MP Anne Marie Trevelyan of
North Northumberland. We can forgive them their attempts to starve the South
East – they want more for their areas in the rural hinterlands but what about
Tories in the South East? What’s their excuse? Why do they stand idly by while
their rural masters try to pick the pockets of more than 50% of the county’s
population?
Answers on a post card please.
If their vow of silence wasn’t bad enough, Daley and Flux
seem to have taken another vow. They’ve ‘abstained’ when it comes to speaking
up for their area when national government comes calling. In an excellent piece
of journalism which highlighted an excellent piece of research (here)
the truth about ‘all in it together’
The report concludes that “a quarter of the lowest paid 10%
have shouldered a particularly heavy burden, losing more than 5% of what would
have been their income without the coalition’s reforms”. So ‘we’re all in it
together’ wasn’t entirely accurate – the poorest workers shouldered the biggest
burden while millionaires received tax cuts.
We’ve always believed in ‘incentives’ and we’ve got common
ground with Daley and Flux we suspect on that but we’ve never been able to work
out why you incentivise the poorest by reducing their income while the ConDems
think that the reverse applies to the richest?
Maybe Daley and Flux could answer that one on a post card
too?
Finally, Cramlington’s own Laura Pidcock has a very important
motion and debate underway in Northumberland County Council on why
‘privatisation of Northumberland’ is and was a bad idea. That will be debated
on 3 Dec and we hope to see Daley and Flux at the meeting supporting the Labour
motion.
We’re sure they’ll want to distance themselves from the
emerging evidence which shows how local ConDems wanted to ‘parcel up’ over
£5billion worth of council services for ‘private sector asset strippers’. I’m
sure they’ll want to distance themselves from the ‘Impower Report’ which set
the former Lib Dem administration (backed in every budget by Peter Jackson’s
Tories) on a path to privatise huge parts of the council and the NHS. The plan
was to allow the private sector an opportunity to make a profit out of public
services by reducing services, increasing charges and sacking between 1850 and
3500 council workers.
We’ve seen Northumberland’s Tories are describing Labour as a
‘tax and spend’ party because we’re proposing to increase council tax by 1.99%
or by £23 per year for the average Band D property yet what Northumberland’s
Tories aren’t keen on telling you is that they were in favour of a plan which
would have seen services reduced and charges increased. The true test of the
hypocrisy of Northumberland Tories is that they campaigned last year to
introduce free car parking for their areas yet they were secretly planning to
support the Lib Dems flogging off parking and transport to a private company
which was advised by the Lib Dems themselves to – increase charges and reduce
services.
The true test for Daley and Flux is to face up to the facts –
they’re isolated from the interests of Peter Jackson’s rural Tories and the
Labour agenda for the south east should be an agenda they should support. They can
start on the route to representing the interests of their people in the South
East on 3 Dec by supporting Laura Pidcock’s motion to back the hard work of the
current Labour group in supporting services, stopping the ‘sale of the family
silver’ and backing the South East against rural Tory attacks.
