Labour failure (From The Northern Echo)

Once again we have a prospective Tory candidate complaining about the fact that Labour has abandoned the North East but then failing completely to offer any alternative policies. David Skelton correctly points out that after 12 years of Labour the Region remains rooted at the bottom of all economic, social and health indicators but he conspicuously avoids telling us how his party would single us out for special treatment – the way that Scotland was by Joel Barnett in 1977 – in order that infrastructure, education, training and business support can be improved. Yes – he tells us how Tory policies might help the UK to recover from the desperate state we are in, but that is not the point. His constituents will want to know how public funding will be diverted from relatively rich areas (like Scotland) to us. Perhaps he would care to write a second letter clarifying this important matter. I don’t expect that he will.

Some good points david and well put.
Yon canditade forgets also that HIS party also put more people out of work in the north than any other party ever. Labour however, failed to redress that in the last 12 years.

As I've said in the past, the fact that they are politicans and therefore completely useless to mankind. Not one of them can offer any creditable policies to help us, yet the all spout the same useless partisan vitirol.

There is a very good article in the Telegrah today regarding the world fuel crisis and coal........and some wonderful comments i.e. the fact that we are sitting on 300years of the stuff, but sadly we can't get to it anymore, simply because of political dogma

Hi Dante

I hope you had a very pleasant Christmas. I totally understand your point about the Tories "putting people out of work" but would add that the Unions and grumpy workers did themselves absolutely no favours whatsoever between 1979 and 1997. Politicians are not just found in Town Halls and Westminster. They also rise to the top of Trades Unions where they are equally useless. With regard to coal, if the Unions and Government had got their act together in the early 1980's we could have saved a significant chunk of the industry. At today's prices, deep mined UK coal is competitive once again. Unfortunately those in charge put confrontation ahead of consensus, largely to satisfy egos and vanity. Both sides were guilty.

Another industry that was exterminated by management/union/Gov
ernmental failure was shipbuilding. Did you see the launch of the world's largest cruise ship, the Oasis of the Seas recently? It was built in Finland. Germany, France and Italy all have thriving cruise ship businesses. These are expensive vessels requiring sophisticated trades to produce the end result, not bulk carriers like those knocked together cheaply in South Korea or Japan. We don't build them. Why? Because the idiots who ran the industry (both sides!!) opted for strikes instead of getting ships out on time and at the contracted price. The Government failed to produce military orders to plug gaps so another North East industry died.

Now we have the scandal of the death of steel. When you read the background to this story, we have been stitched up by international big business and a Government that doesn't care less. A Labour Government.