MP Letter.

Sorting through a few old letters, I happened across this beauty from October 2012. Unfortunately, Mr Timpson wasn't swayed by my clear and reasoned arguments and has since stated he will vote to stay in the EU, without even an idea of what David Cameron will pointlessly try to renegotiate. Even if DC did manage to achieve concessions from Germany and France, we know what they are made of from previous experience. Tony Blair's agreement for CAP reform, anyone?... thought not. 

Edward Timpson

Member of Parliament for Crewe and Nantwich

30 Victoria Square

Crewe

CW1 2JE

Dear Edward

May I first congratulate you on your recent appointment to the position of Minister for Children. I am aware of your hard work for Fostering and Children’s Charities, and can think of no better person for the job.

Thank you for your letter of 17/9/12 in response to my email calling for a referendum regarding the United Kingdom’s continued membership of the EU. However, I take issue with some of the points you raise.

The piecemeal concessions you list in your letter go nowhere near far enough in achieving an acceptable position for the United Kingdom with respect to the EU. People in our country are still enduring the effects of cuts in public services, whilst the EU squanders billions of pounds of our taxes on needless, vanity projects like the ‘Museum of European History’ in Brussels. Food prices rise by the day whilst thousands of tonnes of fish are plundered from our seas by subsidised foreign fishing boats, only to be thrown back dead because they do not fall with the EU’s ‘Landing Quota’.  Unchecked migration of people from Eastern Europe continues to put huge pressure on our public services, infrastructure and welfare system, whilst deserving people who have paid into the system all their lives are let down. None of the concessions you list in your letter change any of this.

Furthermore, I gather that the Conservatives in the European Parliament did nothing to oppose the French Legal Action in response to the calls for a reduction in the incredibly costly and totally unnecessary number of sessions held at the Strasbourg Parliament Building. How can the Government claim that EU membership is important to reform it from within, yet sit on their hands when a perfect opportunity to do so arises? This pathetic performance goes some way to explain why membership of the Conservative Party has almost halved during David Cameron’s leadership, with many thousands opting to join UKIP, as I have done.

Any significant change in our relationship with the EU would clearly require negotiation at a number of levels. To achieve the best settlement from any negotiation, one must enter into it when the other party is in its weakest position. The EEC took advantage our weak position in 1975, when our existing relationship was agreed. It is clear that the Eurozone countries are moving towards a more closely integrated, Federal European Superstate. This is not what the vast majority of people in our country want for Britain. Now is the ideal time to re-negotiate our position.

I am pleased that you raise the subject of the EU-South Korean Free Trade Deal. Whilst Korean Manufacturers have enjoyed a sales surge in Europe, our embattled domestic manufacturers have experienced anything but in Korea, where protectionist government purchasing policies and legislative blocks still exist. The deal has been openly criticised by both Stephen Odel, the head of Ford Motor Company’s European Operations, and Sergio Marchionne, the head of FIAT, both authorities in Manufacturing Industry and International Trade. The former asserts that the deal will cost around 70,000 manufacturing jobs in Europe, already in the grips of a deep recession and high unemployment. For the EU to have negotiated a deal which ignores ‘non-trade barriers’ and fails to include a ‘snap-back’ clause is amateurish to say the least.

I find it incredible that you can find cause to celebrate the very same Trade Deal in your letter.

International Trade was once something at which our country excelled. We pioneered it. It was the basis for the growth of British Power and Influence all around the world, a vehicle for co-operation and peace, and the reason why English is spoken in every corner of the globe. To surrender our ability to strike our own trade deals to unelected, unaccountable and clearly incompetent EU Trade Commissioners is demonstrably bad for Britain. To claim that Britain is better off in a larger trading block is also nonsense. The UK is the world’s 5^th biggest economy, and our international partners both in Europe and around the world are eager to trade with us.

I implore you to back calls a straightforward ‘In-Out’ Referendum on EU membership, so the British People can have their say on the billions lost to fraud and corruption, the misappropriated funds, the thousands of tonnes of fish ‘discard’, the white elephant of Strasbourg, the unfair Common Agricultural Policy, calamitous Economic Policies, the black hole of the Euro, and uncompetitive and restrictive Trade Deals. If you need any more good reasons to hold a referendum at the earliest opportunity, please let me know by return as I will be happy to provide many more.

Yours faithfully

Cllr. Stuart Hutton (UKIP).

Socialist Slapdown

Response to ‘Welfare System has Failed Working Folk’ (Crewe Chronicle, Wed 12^th June).

I enjoyed Mick Robert’s letter in last week’s edition ‘Welfare System has Failed Working Folk’, for what he unwittingly wrote was a perfect description of how irrelevant the Labour Party has become.

The Labour Movement was once a very important Political Force in our country. Its achievements in Worker’s Rights during the Industrial Revolution – a time of tremendous and unprecedented social upheaval – should be applauded. However, most of the points raised by Mr Roberts illustrate perfectly, just how the Labour Party has become an organisation no longer motivated by the needs of honest, hard working people, but simply by its own Self-Preservation and Socialist Ideology.

He claims that the strain on the Welfare System is due to the ‘broader structural causes of need’. To understand this rather cryptic statement, one must understand Labour’s interpretation of ‘the needy’. To Labour, ‘the needy’ are not merely those less-fortunate individuals who through no fault of their own are unable to work, but anyone they can possibly get onto State Benefits.

This is Labour’s raison d’être. They believe the more people they can get ‘hooked on handouts’, the greater their vote. That’s why, under the Blair/Brown governments, the number of individuals in receipt of State Benefits increased from 24% to 39% of the population, with the welfare bill soaring from £55Bn to £112Bn over the same period (source: ukpublicspending.co.uk). This was despicable vote-buying of the worst kind, the bill for which we will all be paying for the best part of 20 years at the expense of economic growth and jobs.

All of which makes Mr Roberts’ subsequent comment about George Osborne’s ‘damaging economic policies’ completely incredulous. True, Mr Osborne’s policies are far from successful, but I credit the people of Crewe and Nantwich with the intelligence to understand that the causes of our huge budget deficit are the structural costs built-in by Gordon Brown’s welfare profligacy. Mr Roberts clearly does not.

It is telling that Mr Roberts speaks of ‘action on demeaning work’. Exactly which jobs does Mr Roberts consider ‘demeaning’? Perhaps if fewer of those falling under this socialist doctrine considered certain jobs ‘beneath them’, the welfare system would be sufficient to help those truly in need. In my opinion, no work is demeaning.

He also blames the strain on our welfare system on ‘widening inequality in our society’. We do live in an unequal society – this is due not to a lack of opportunity, but aspiration – itself a failure of the burgeoning Welfare State. After all, every child has the opportunity to go to school, work hard and do well. But some do not take this opportunity, having been raised with a ‘something for nothing’ culture of entitlement. The real solution here is ‘breaking the cycle’ through education and a cultural shift towards aspiration and hard work – not through the usual Labour plan of ‘throwing money at a problem’ by increasing benefits. This, I believe. Is Labour’s greatest betrayal of the honest, working people of the United Kingdom. As someone once said, “Socialism is fine – until you run out of other people’s money”.

I look forward to the day when genuine, hard working, people, who have, with the best of intentions voted for Labour in the past realise they have been sold a pup. No other party has done more to make life difficult for the working people of the United Kingdom.

For it was Labour that opened the floodgates to millions of unskilled migrants, taking jobs and depressing wages, it was Labour that slapped ineffective, ‘green’ taxes on industry, forcing what was left of our Heavy Manufacturing to move overseas, it was Labour that scrapped Grammar Schools, a tremendous vehicle of social mobility for working class boys and girls, it was Labour that introduced Tuition Fees, making it harder for students from working families to go to university, and it is Labour that still refuses to give the ordinary, working people of the UK their say on who runs our country in an EU Referendum.

Cllr. Stuart Hutton (UKIP).