Ashok Kumar (From The Northern Echo)

Ashok Kumar

10:10am Saturday 20th March 2010 in

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YOUR obituary and tributes to Dr Ashok Kumar, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, have been heartening.

As staff to Ashok, we have had the honour and privilege to serve him for varying periods. He treated the cleaner and postman, who worked along his parliamentary corridor or serviced our Guisborough office, with the same respect, and gave them as much time as he did ministers.

Often a humorously self-deprecating man, he liked nothing more than spending time with us. But spare time for Ashok was scarce. Over the past year he agonised over the plight of Corus workers daily; being frustrated that, as an MP, many assumed he had a magic wand.

Unfortunately, he did not.

Only a month ago he walked into our adjoining office in Parliament in utter despair, eyes welling, cursing the fact that people he cared so passionately about were soon to be made redundant. He had worked there and never lost his love of the place.

The current negative reputation of MPs, in which all have been tarred with the same brush, is unhealthy for politicians and the public.

This is because in Ashok people had someone who oozed integrity, decency, intellectual vigour, modesty and a desire for nothing but to do right by his constituents. It’s time people recognised this.

Ashok was a courageous, dignified and thoroughly decent man with a common touch and we’ll never forget him.

Daniel Wood, Alex Bryce, Ali Craft, David Walsh and Claire Risker, Office of Dr Ashok Kumar, Guisborough, and House of Commons, London.

I WAS deeply saddened and shocked by the death of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Ashok Kumar.

Although I am the Conservative parliamentary candidate in his constituency, I have always had the utmost respect for him and his work, having known him long before my adoption.

Several years ago, he was part of a delegation of MPs to Syria and met President Assad and other Syrian politicians. At the time, I was working for the group leader, MP Richard Spring, at Westminster, and joined the MPs in helping with arrangements and keeping a written account of discussions.

On one occasion, Richard asked if I would speak and give thanks to our Syrian hosts. I was a little nervous, but remember Ashok being very kind and reassuring both before and afterwards.

He wrote to me when I was selected as Conservative candidate saying he remembered me well from the trip, and promised a good, clean contest.

He will be remembered as an extremely good-natured and hard-working MP. In one way, he was the perfect opponent as you knew he would always fight a clean campaign. In another, he was the least desirable opponent as almost everyone you met said what a pleasant man he was.

My thoughts are with his friends and family.

Paul Bristow, Guisborough.

THE unexpected and tragic death of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Ashok Kumar from heart disease at the age of only 53 (Echo, March 17) has reminded us of how serious a problem this is.

My father died unexpectedly, at 54 years of age, of a heart attack due to coronary thrombosis and his father died from the same cause aged 46.

There are thousands of people walking around totally unaware that they have a serious undiagnosed coronary artery disease.

My doctor’s surgery has recently been running a heart disease screening programme.

If we are to reduce the number of people dying from what is still the biggest cause of death in the UK it will be necessary for all family doctors to emphasis the availability of a heart disease screening programmes at their practices.

Keith Dewison, Billingham