If you're reading this blog on polling day trying to decide how to cast your vote in the most important election this country has seen in 30 years, please consider the following before making your decision:
(1) There is only one fundamental choice to make - do you want Labour or the Conservatives to run Britain for the next 5 years?
(2) Both parties have made promises about the future - but judge Labour and the Conservatives not just on their promises but also on their record.
(3) In Labour's time in office, the UK in general and the North East in particular have made huge strides. In this particular constituency, we've seen a brand new hospital in Hexham; 5 new Sure Start children's centres in Hexham, Haltwhistle, Prudhoe, Ponteland and Bellinghan; a road-bypass around Haydon Bridge, hugely improving local residents' quality of life.
(4) Nationally, Labour brought in the National Minimum Wage (which the Tories voted against), rescuing millions from poverty-level wages; invested billions in the NHS, leading to 89,000 more nurses, 27,000 more doctors, and far shorter waiting times; invested billions in education; gave pensioners the Winter Fuel Allowance, the free bus pass, the free TV licence for those 75+, and the minimum income guarantee; and introduced child tax credits and working tax credits.
(5) The North East suffered horrendously under the last Tory government. Remember what happened to the mines? The steel works in Consett? The poll tax?
(6) In an interview with Jeremy Paxman, David Cameron identified two parts of the country which he considers over-dependent on public spending - the North East and Northern Ireland. It's absolutely obvious that if the Conservatives get back into power, they will be gunning for the North East.
If you value what we've achieved in the past 13 years, and don't want to see it thrown away under the Tories, please vote Labour today.
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1 comment:
Perhaps a better strategy to avoid "seeing it all thrown away", might have been to spend more time in Carlisle (lost by 853 votes), than to have self-indulgently spent time in this rotten borough (which never changes hands and was held with a 5,788 majority over the Lib Democrats)?
For parties that are content with the current lottery voting system, they should work with it and direct their resources more effectively: it is a brutal system with brutal results, so you should be brutal in your approach to fighting in this system.
We don't matter in this constituency and would have been better served (in terms of helping the North East avoid another period of economic violation by the Tories) if you had held Carlisle (and possibly Redcar and Stockton South - 332 votes in it) and possibly taken Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale. And the money spent could have been better spent counteracting the Ashcroft money elsewhere in the country. Electoral addresses from no-hope candidates are a waste of money. As Ashcroft has shown, money counts and elections can be bought - particularly if the poorer parties are self-indulgent and do not work to counteract MONEY in the marginals where people matter.
Better "lie back and think of England", and hope that when the Tories come back and spin the lottery machine of an electoral system for a "real majority", that the non-Tory candidates wake up, realise that their bank accounts are empty and that they have to concentrate on realistic hopes and totally ignore non-marginal seats; those like Hexham forever in the grip of the Tories, and those like Gateshead that will always be tribally Labour.
It's not that we don't deserve a chance to choose our representatives, but until we have a voting system that allows transferring of support across areas larger than current constituencies, any attempt to give us a choice is futile and our interests our better served by working in areas that can be offered a real choice.
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