Dear Sir,
The Newton News welcomes and prints comments and campaigns about local political matters and this is to be applauded. We are almost unique in having such an open platform for people to express their opinions about local issues.
What is distressing, however, is when letters are unpleasant and unreasonable. Recent letters about the West Park Lakes have contained factual inaccuracies, and personal misrepresentations and libels. One of them invited people to troll two named councillors. This is not healthy debate.
Neither can it be argued that the accused have the right of reply. Often the range of criticism is so wide and random that it would take three or four editions to reply rationally to every point. Moreover, councillors who ‘give as good as they get’ are then criticised for ‘slagging each other off’.
Officers of the council are in an even more invidious position. They are not responsible for the Council’s policies they implement – the councillors who make the policies are accountable for that. Moreover, officers are unable to write to defend themselves so to belittle and libel them is ethically odious.
Two things worry me especially about all this. The first is the impression that all this gives to the rest of the County, where Aycliffe politics are regarded as unnecessarily nasty. Aycliffe’s councillors travel all over the region promoting Great Aycliffe’s interests. But it is harder to do this when the people they are lobbying have been given the impression that Aycliffe people do not agree with their councillors – and, indeed, actively despise them.
Secondly, I am disappointed that some people still think that the way to get what you want is to be aggressive and to ‘go to war’. Experience in our personal lives and relationships shows that this is usually counter-productive, and nobody gains by such vitriol; everybody comes out of it demeaned.
In the past this was not such an issue. The Labour government allocated grants on the basis of need, so it did not matter how we looked. Nowadays, however, the future of the town lies in the businesses we can attract, and the partnerships we can build.
A climate in which our leaders and partners are regularly held up for vicious hostility in the local press will only damage our chances. We need to polish up our community image, not publicly disparage it.
I am not saying that councillors should not be accountable – readers know that I have been trying for years to promote dialogue about local issues. But I do urge correspondents to check their facts, and to avoid ad hominem attacks on individuals. And – when they have written their letter – people should ask themselves what it will make other councillors, businesses and residents think of Newton Aycliffe.
Cllr John D Clare
