LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Pox on Tories and New Labour

There’s no wonder the people of his ilk usually hide their identity behind “Name and Address Supplied” coming out with tripe like that. But, there could be an element of truth in the fact that Starmer and the Blairite, Tory collaborators, have distanced themselves from the working class, and are breaking every link they had with it (by stitching up and circumventing the democratic procedures in the organisation and its principles) by expelling good socialists, and are turning the party into a Tory-lite shadow of the powerful force it once was.

It offers no hope at the moment for the millions who have voted Labour all their lives and the younger, heavily indebted generations, who will follow them.

If ever the working class needed bold socialist policies, and a party brave enough to carry them through, it is now!

Instead, we have got a fawning rabble of handpicked MPs, most of whom have more allegiance with Zionism than Socialism, and a “leader” who has thrown his hand in behind American imperialism, NATO, and their aggressive, promise-breaking, expansion east, that could lead to the end of life on this planet as we know it.

Apart from nuclear annihilation, we are on the edge of one of the most serious financial crises ever. If the experts are correct, it will be bigger and more brutal than the crash of 1929. The writing was on the wall before the pandemic started, but the fallout from Brexit, which severed long-standing trade routes and supplies, which didn’t help Britain’s finances at all; and now with the US demanding sanctions on Russian exports of gas, grain, oil and wheat etc., energy and some food prices have trebled and will carry on increasing. That will cripple the finances of many households who are living on the edge and send them over a cliff.

I will end my letter with a touching example of life in our town, and other struggling ex-blue collar industrial towns like ours.

I had been down our empty, deserted town and was walking up Wellgate. The usual chaos ensued: parking on double yellows, cars on the pavement blocking pedestrian access, beer cans in the gutter, plastic bottles and other types of litter everywhere and that sickening stench of skunk every few yards as is normal these days.

I turned up my street and met a lady, who has been a very good neighbour of mine for the last 40 odd years, shuffling down the street with the aid of a Zimmer frame. She was very attractive in her younger days. I stopped to talk to her. She had had problems with anti-social yobs living next door to her in a “Half Way House”.

She has only recently lost her husband and soul mate of many years. With tears in her eyes, and a few in mine, she was telling me what a lovely man he was, how much she misses him, and how he died such a painful death.

She stiffened a bit as, she told me angrily, how much his funeral was costing her. “They want a hundred for this…a hundred for that, I can’t bloody afford that”. The total bill was £6,500, and no help.

She showed me her teeth, which I had already noticed some were missing on her top set. She had fallen over on her Zimmer, hit the floor and broke them. “Do you know how much they want to sort them?” she asked “Eight hundred bloody pounds. They look like stopping as they are”.

That’s Tory and New Labour Britain today. And it won’t get any better. A pox on em all!

Dave Platts, Clifton