PARTY POLITICAL PROPAGANDA

The other day someone pushed a Labour Party election leaflet (Tameside voice) through my letterbox.

If you live in Tameside, you'll probably get one through your door too.

Their opening salvo was predictable! ‘Unfair Tory cuts are hitting Tameside hard – Really?  No mention of last year’s £7million under spend, whilst the council were cutting front line services and flogging off land and buildings!

Then, blazed in red across the front cover was a list giving 7 reasons to vote Labour.

1 Not raising council tax this year! No, but they did last year, but then there were no elections last year, were there!

2 Raising aspirations of young people! Then letting them down like they did when they were in office!

3 Compulsory Jobs guarantee! Or putting square pegs in round holes to massage the unemployment figures!

4 Bringing new business to Tameside. How about stopping it leaving in the first place?

5 Introducing a Loyalty Scheme for shoppers. But no mention of how much such a scheme would cost, how it works or who is going to pay for it!

6 Six months free business tax on new businesses using empty shops. It was the exorbitant business rates that contributed to Tameside having so many empty shops. Plus, how about those traders who are struggling to survive. What’s your ‘free’ offer to them?

7 Getting tough with ‘pay-day lenders’ This is a problem that requires new legislation in Parliament and cannot be tackled by local councillors! So it’s pure smoke and mirrors!

Now I’ll give you a few reasons to vote for anyone but Labour.

Every Labour Government has left office with unemployment higher than when they came to office.

Taking the annual figures (available back to 1971), both the Harold Wilson & James Callaghan-led Labour Government of 1974 to 1979 and the period of Tony Blair & Gordon Brown’s New Labour from 1997 to 2010 – official figures show that in both Labour controlled periods, (Oct-Dec 1974 to Mar-May 1979) the unemployment level increased from 976,000 to 1.4 million and the rate increased from 3.7% to 5.3% and (May-Jul 1997 to Mar-May 2010), the unemployment level increased from 2.1 million to 2.5 million and the rate increased from 7.3% to 7.9%.

Now I've no love for the current government, but at least they have turned the economy round and are gradually getting more people back into work. As it stands at of the end of April 2014, the number of people out of work fell by 77,000 to 2.24 million!

One of the reasons why I hate our current ‘one party’ council with a vengeance, is they simply don't have a clue about business economics, it's all take, take, take, spend, spend, spend and unlike their Labour masters in Westminster; who when voted out of office, they leave someone else to clean up their mess.

This draconian monopoly, who has orchestrated a voting system which means for the past 40 years it’s been virtually impossible for them to be voted out; simply carry on creating chaos and ruining our once thriving market towns, at our expense! - Mark my words; Mossley’s market ground will be next!

Take for instance Hyde Market. They spend £1.3 million creating a ‘civic square’ which has virtually killed the outdoor market! They then knock down the town’s multi-story Car Park, leaving Hyde shoppers and visitors fighting over the remaining 278 public car parking spaces.(FOI Figures from Tameside council!)

Then we have their latest coup; the Christmas Market in Ashton. The simple objective was to get more shoppers into the town, spending money. But as is all too frequently the case, our blinkered councillors when confronted with a problem, come up with a solution which we have to pay for and which makes things worse. 

The Christmas Market cost well over £291,000! (Council’s own figures)

They tell us on the one hand that, “At Tameside Council we are acutely aware of the pressures under which retailers have had to operate over the last six years. We are committed to reviving our town centres and have been working closely with town teams.”

So, what do they do? In Ashton, they increase the Car Parking charges by 80% – from £1.00 to £1.80 for an hour!

If you want more of this, then vote for them. If you don’t, then vote for someone else, as long as you vote!

If you think not voting doesn't make a difference, then you're falling into their political trap - don’t forget that some of these Labour councillors, especially those who chair and sit on lucrative panels really don’t want you to vote! – a low turnout serves these career councillors just fine, because then it only takes a few hundred of their staunch supporters to vote, which then allows them to claim a democratic mandate to keep on ruining our towns whilst pursuing their own personal agendas and picking up many thousands of pounds in ‘allowances’.

We might not be able effect their overall control, but we can loosen their grip!