Today's Letters

Journal Letters 19th August
We do not need another apathy-generating party
Those proposing a new North East political party could hardly have chosen a worse time to fly their kite.

Don’t they realise that the publics are fed up to the back teeth with all political parties, new, old or decrepit?

That’s why two out of three of us never bother to vote in elections.

And having seen their suggested ‘manifesto’ all it offers is a re-heated form of old labour politics that did so much to being this region to its knees in the 70s and 80s and from which we have still to fully recover.

If you want to see where the future lies look at those councils where independents, not party politicians, are in the majority.

What do you nearly always get? Services run efficiently with balanced books and a prudently managed budget because independent councillors can concentrate on serving the people rather than spouting ideology.

It’s the independent mayors of Middlesborough and Hartlepool that have transformed their towns and brought pride and business back to both, not the party politicians who had to have their heads banged together in both places before they started to co-operate for the good of the community.

Look at those cost-effective, well run and popular small rural councils where party political bickering, thankfully, has no place because independents have been elected instead.
If only all local government was as well run and efficient as these places, apathy would be a thing of the past.

Many of these small and well run councils will, of course, disappear if we vote to have a Regional Assembly in November’s referendum, which is no doubt why the advocates of this "new party" are so in favour of it. More snouts in the trough.

Pete Townshend got it right in the 1970s: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
Allan Pond
Windsor Avenue
Whitley Bay