Dear Sir,
Sedgefield CLP Campaign team (Momentum?) consider that, because statics show Cllr. J. D. Clare refers substantially more complaints to DCC than his fellow Conservative Ward Councillors, he is a better Councillor. This is nonsense! Cllr. Clare is perceived by the Ward electorate as being the best to complain to because he is a Labour Councillor and DCC is a Labour/Momentum controlled Council, with an almost exclusively Labour Cabinet. The electorate know that Non-Labour Councillors are excluded from decision making and properly representing their electorate. My wife used to consistently complain to DCC when street-lights were ‘out’ on the A167. She got fed up with the lack of prompt action.
However, this is changing.
At the recent Woodham West GATC election the Labour / Momentum candidate, backed up by his Campaign Team, got 116 votes, 776 less than the Liberal Democrat and only four votes more than the Independent Candidate. At the General election voters fled from Labour/Momentum and they continue to do so. Until Labour rid themselves of the cancer that is Momentum only Momentum supporters will vote for them.
Two weeks ago Sedgefield Labour Women’s Forum (Cllr. Kathy Beetham?) latched on to an ‘Independent’ Report on the fall in life expectancy (especially among woman). They linked this fall to the, “Tory ideology of Austerity”. Again, this is nonsense and for the following reasons:
1) Labour’s Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling bailed out the Banks and, in so doing, made it impossible for the country to borrow. They maxed out our Credit Card. Both the Coalition Government and Cameron’s government were elected on manifestos of ‘Austerity’. That is what they said they HAD to do and, luckily, we elected them. While Cameron was offering ‘Austerity’, Ed Miliband’s Labour offered ‘Austerity Lite’. This, the electorate rejected.
2) Life expectancy starts at the moment of conception. The circumstances and health of the parents being an important factor for life expectancy. The effects of ‘Austerity’ on children born 5 years ago will not be apparent until they die. However, the effects of the Abortion Act were, and are, immediate. Why are the Labour party women so worried about the fall in life expectancy when they support ending a life even before birth?
3) The increased life expectancy of people born immediately post-war has been attributed to the fact that they were born in a time of extreme austerity. I can remember sweets coming off rationing when I was four/five years old. Rationing was reinstated due to there being a lack of sugar. There were very fewer obese children in my class! I did not know about Diabetes.
4) It is obvious that the increase in childhood obesity and diabetes, the Aids/HIV epidemic, and cancers caused by increased pollution, are generally, the main drivers in the fall in life expectancy currently being experienced.
Both, the Labour/Momentum Campaign Group and their Women’s Forum, are abusing statistics in order to try and hoodwink the electorate into believing that they give a hoot about life expectancy and good representative local Governance
Yours Sincerely,
Alastair P.G. Welsh
