Another Labour NHS gaffe

Posted by Chris:

Labour councillors embarrassed themselves again last Thursday after attacking NHS efficiency savings that were actually introduced by their own Labour Government in 2009 .

At the meeting of Redcar and Cleveland Council Labour members attacked the Coalition Government on the NHS, including accusations of cuts in local provision.

However, Lib Dem Group Leader Glyn Nightingale pointed out that the previous Labour Government had announced a £20 billion spending cuts programme in 2009!

Department of Health figures show that Redcar and Cleveland NHS Trust is getting nearly £7 million more from the Government this year.

Glyn Nightingale, Leader of the Council Liberal Democrat Group, said:

“The Liberal Democrats left the meeting, because they are concerned that Council meetings have rapidly become dominated by Labour Party propaganda and political antics rather than getting on with the business of running the Council for local people.

Labour is not just wasting the Council’s time. They get their facts wrong. We have complained about this for months. Last week Labour set up two factually incorrect questions on the NHS that had nothing to do with Council business.

A question from Councillor Massey speculating about the impact of the NHS bill was unnecessary, as the bill is still going through Parliament and is not yet the law.

Councillor Wendy Wall’s question blaming the Government for cuts in the Tees health budget was unbelievable. The Coalition is actually protecting NHS spending in real terms each year. What the Government has been struggling to get on top of in the NHS is the previous Labour Government's five-year programme of £20 billion spending cuts announced in 2009.

The Borough faces serious challenges over the coming years. It’s the business of Councillors to face these rather than waste time on party political stunts."

In all the years I have been a Councillor (I was first elected in 1978) I cannot recall any other occasion when I have felt it necessary to walk out of a meeting albeit only for the duration of the two planted questions. The desperation that the Labour party has shown in seeking to blame Liberal Democrats and MP Ian Swales in particular for absolutely everything is shocking. Their claims are bordering on bonkers and do not stand up to the slightest scrutiny but they are relentless in repeating misinformation and not checking the facts.

Local Labour Councillor gets Labour MPs into bother

A local Labour Councillor's petty complaint about Ian Swales MP having a party logo on a Government funded website led 19 other MPs into bother. 8 of them were Labour, of which 2 were Labour Co-op. Two of them were from the north east and not new MPs either.

The second Ian realised that a mistake had been made by the provider of the site he paid the small amount of money back and has claimed nothing at all for the site. Yet at every opportunity local Labour activists have abused him about it  in leaflet after leaflet, even accusing him of stealing money from taxpayers.

They say nothing about all the former Labour MPs now languishing in jail for massive MP expenses fraud, nor do they mention the hundreds of pounds former Redcar MP Vera Baird tried to claim for Christmas decorations or the thousands she claimed for repairs to her Redcar home and then refused to pay it back after the property was sold.

Bad losers Labour and their Kangaroo Court

A press statement from Redcar Labour Party claiming that the Lib Dem Councillors for Zetland Ward, Ron Harrison and Jim Rogers, who were forced by Labour to resign their seats because they worked for a foundation school, were incompetent is disgraceful. 

Ron and Jim did everything correctly and acted in good faith. They included their place of work on the forms and their nomination papers were validated by officers of the Labour controlled Council.

It was not until three months after the election that bad losers Labour began their campaign to get Ron and Jim out. They started on the very day the Council was debating a Lib Dem motion to abandon the "vertical pier." This prevented Ron and Jim voting for the motion which could have gone either way. This was the first and only time that Councillors had the opportunity to vote on the "vertical pier."

Labour’s campaign to get them out threatened them with tens of thousands of unaffordable legal costs. Labour even held their own Kangaroo Court in the Town Hall after first wasting thousands of pounds of public money obtaining legal advice when the Council has its own lawyers on the staff. Why did they need specialist legal advice if the issue was clear as they claim in their press release?

It’s a legal minefield. No-one should need to plough through masses of legal red tape before standing for the Council. Any legal doubt about disbarring people who work in foundation schools like Ron Harrison and Jim Rogers did from being councillors needs clearing up. To clear the air once and for all, Ian Swales MP has promised to raise the matter in Parliament.

On the doorstep we have found that local residents can’t understand why two well-respected local people have been forced to resign from the Council and cause a by-election.

Labour's accusations are unfair. It was Labour who spent public money on legal advice and it was Council officials who issued letters of validation when Ron and Jim's nominations were submitted.

Labour ignored public opinion and just ploughed on with the "vertical pier" regardless of what local people wanted. And then when the Lib Dems soundly defeated Labour in Zetland Ward they could not stand it. They stumbled on an obscure loophole in the law, that may or may not prevent teachers at foundation schools from becoming Councillors and used bully boy tactics in Kangaroo Courts to force a re-run of the election in the Ward. They don't deserve to win and we are determined to make sure that they don't win.

Coastal View

Posted by Chris:

I see that Coastal View is claiming, in its letters page, that my letter in issue 13 was crass and they were only reporting news. This was not news reporting it was pure propaganda with hardly a sniff of the truth. It was a series of exaggerated claims and smears about the Liberal Democrats with no balancing comments, no journalism, no editing, no right of reply, just Labour press releases published verbatim without any check on the facts at all. It was unfair, biased and most unprofessional.

There appears to be no end to it or any hope of more balanced reporting in the future. Claims by the same Labour Councillors, published in issue 15, give the impression that a company is considering building a wind farm on the Stray. A simple check with the company concerned would show that there was no truth at all in these claims. It was pure scaremongering. The next thing we will read is a story claiming they have successfully fought if off.

UPDATE

Coastal View would like to point out that the comments appeared on the letters page and was a readers letter not their comments.
They were, however, unlike all the other letters on the page, unattributed to anyone .