The Budget......
Below is the statement I gave, obviously they can't print it all but the article below also shares the views of the others, clearly we were reading different budgets or living on separate planets.
This budget did nothing to address the real needs of the Country and certainly didn't listen to ordinary people, it was a completely out of touch budget by a government that is not fit to govern. No mention of Schools, Social Care or Policing, no funding for the vital services that need them or that the public said they want to see funded properly.
Universal Credit U-turn was welcomed but it didn't go far enough, plummeting families into debt and despair for 5 weeks instead of 6 isn't really worth the pat on the back local Tories are desperate to give themselves.
Previous Labour Governments lifted millions of Children out of Poverty, the Conservatives have willingly placed an extra 1million children and 1.9million pensioners into poverty and the budget did nothing to address this. Worst rate in Western Europe and clearly no concern about it, only Labour will look after the most vulnerable.
The NHS was robbed, given a token amount to make people believe they support it, yet the Leave camp £350m a week is still nowhere to be seen, one of the chief Leave Campaigners was AMT maybe she can tell us where it is? Or better still why spend £1billion on the DUP rather than the NHS? Crucial questions she never answers.
Slowest growth since 2009, poorest performance of the G7 Countries with a forecast of more failure. Little in the budget to address this, yet the Conservatives wish to crow on about being "fit for the future" and a "strong economy" but its simply not true.
Ordinary hard working peoples living standards are down, to pretend they are better off is simply a pretence, on the 26th of November Labour in Alnwick, Rothbury, Seahouses, Berwick, Druridge Bay all held activities that reported people feeling much poorer under the Tories with a staggering 90% reporting being worse off. People need wonder no more why we have food banks operating at the level we have in Northumberland, you only need to look at the lack of understanding about the ordinary person from this government and its MP's.
The North of Tyne Devo deal was announced with a mass Tory scramble to pose for pictures, Cllrs and Politicians who hadn't been part of the deal-making. It will be good for the North if the powers are exercised properly, luckily the deals were thrashed out by the Labour Administration at County Hall despite the pretence from the Tories that they achieved this in the last few months. With Newcastle and North Tyneside I'm confident that the Tory Administration won't make a mess of this like they have with the Core Strategy and other things they created mayhem with.
In summary, the budget lacked reality, the statements from local politicians lacked reality of local ordinary hard-working people and rightly people are angry, change is coming and a budget for the many and not the few will be on the way soon.
Berwick Advertiser
