Dear Editor,
Sadly, a number of Newtonians prominent in local politics have joined UKIP. In my View, UKIP collates the prejudices of middle aged bigots with middle class privilege. UKIP are a party of people who enjoyed social mobility across their generation, and now seek to convince the younger generation that the reason they cannot enjoy the same social mobility is down to migrant workers. This is a lie.
The reason the current generation of workers cannot access social mobility is due to a succession of governments failing to create full employment for all workers. Alongside, allowing standards of living, housing, education, health care, and public services to deteriorate to pre-WW2 conditions. The ‘free market’ has gone unchallenged; the pillars which secure our community have fallen into the hands of profiteers at the expense of ordinary working people.
Across this parliament, the Tories have demonised the unemployed, berated them into low paid, insecure, part time work. The Labour Party will create a real job for a real wage, for every person unemployed under twenty five. The Tories are set to punish the poorest by 12 billion across the term of the next parliament, the sick and disabled are at risk, and so too are the millions of hard working people who are entitled to claim working tax credit. The Labour Party will balance spending by recouping money from millionaire tax cheats and corporations who do not pay their fair share of tax.
Only the Tories would look at social housing across deprived areas and think of homes as office space to be rented by the square foot. Labour will abolish the bedroom tax, which has plunged the poorest into abject poverty. The Tories will allow those lucky enough to rent a housing association home the right to buy it; a measure which would reduce the availability of affordable housing stock, marginalising ordinary working people into private rented accommodation at obscene inflated prices. Labour have agreed to abolish agency fees, tackle rogue landlords, control social rents, and build two hundred thousand affordable homes.
The Tories have said that they will give 8 billion to the NHS. They won’t say where the money will come from, because it will be taken from cuts they administer to our other much needed public services. Don’t imagine they will task the richest with putting their hands in their pockets. It is their contempt for ordinary people which sees the Tories preside over where the axe falls. The Labour Party are to make significant advances in returning the NHS to full public ownership and reduce the scope for profiteers who absorb the institution’s money.
The failure to vote Labour is a licence to return David Cameron to number 10, where his campaign to erode everything our community has achieved since WW2 will continue. Do you want for your family: poorer services, extortionate rents, poverty wages, part time-zero hours jobs, education and health care tendered out for profit? Do nothing, and the Tories will return for another term to punish ordinary working people.
Warren Saunders,
Elemore Place.