I HOPE that when voting day arrives in December, the people in County Durham remember how this Conservative Government with its unprecedented cuts to public spending have helped to cut to the bone public services in our area.

People in the county, especially in south-west Durham, should find a bus timetable dated 2005 and see the bus services that were available then, and those available now.

One village on the main Crook to Bishop Auckland road doesn’t see a bus after 6.30pm every day of the week and none on a Sunday. Where’s George Osborne and his Northern Powerhouse when people can’t even get from A to B.

Visit your local library and ask what the opening times were in 2005 and what they are now. Look at your street and road lighting.

Not only that but David Cameron and George Osborne shamefully laid the financial ills of the country, the national debt, firmly at the door of the poor, the sick and the infirm.

Chief executives and bankers retire with million pound handshakes, but if a little old fella in Sunnybrow gets £20-a-week extra because he has a complaint, all hell is let loose.

When the Conservative candidate knocks on your door just say: “I will listen to you when County Durham gets the same amount of money per head of population as some of the other counties in the country, you know, the Tory areas.”

John Phelan, Howden-le-Wear