Freedom is hard won, but so easily lost.

The 100^th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War will lend an extra poignancy to Remembrance Sunday this year. I urge everybody in our town, young and old, to attend this very solemn and touching event, always observed so beautifully in Nantwich.

I never fail to be impressed and incredibly proud, of the young people representing our youth organisations and local schools who lay wreaths so respectfully. Whilst our thoughts are naturally with those who gave their lives in the past so that we might be free today, this aspect of the ceremony gives me cause think about our future with optimism and hope.

I am proud that it is our country, and our people that have done so much to advance the cause of Personal Freedom throughout the centuries, for ours is the land of Trial by Jury, Freedom of Speech, Democracy and Habeas Corpus, the country of Magna Carta and The Universal Franchise, that abolished slavery and fought Fascism and Communism.

Sometimes we take for granted the freedoms we enjoy today, but we must never forget the sacrifices of those in past and be vigilant to new threats to our liberty; Religious Extremism, Twisted Political Ideology or Cultural Intolerance. To question and confront those who would seek to take our freedom is the greatest tribute we can pay those who laid down their lives all those years ago.

Freedom is hard won, but so easily lost.

Labour Hypocrites

Letter to the Nantwich Guardian 6/10/14

I never cease to be amazed by the hypocrisy of the Labour Party. The last edition of your newspaper contained letters from the Labour Party PPC for Crewe and a Labour Borough Councillor bemoaning the high cost of housing and low levels of wages. Their failure to acknowledge the role of the Labour Party in causing these issues and the discredited solutions they offered are typical of Labour, who are more concerned with imposing their Political Ideology than the best interests of those they claim to represent.

Since Labour embraced EU Immigration Policy and opened our borders to 500 million people in 2004, net immigration has soared to around 250,000 per year (that we know about), making England the second most crowded country in Europe. Clearly, this puts incredible stress on our housing supply, thus increasing demand and prices.

This influx of predominantly low or unskilled labour has also caused ‘wage compression’. Excess supply will always cause prices to go down. I suggest that Labour Councillors and PPCs buy a basic A-Level Economics Book and look up ‘Supply and Demand’.

Their solutions? More borrowing – lumbering our children and grandchildren with even more debt. Much like Ed Milliband in his widely derided ‘Leader’s’ speech, they fail to mention the existing £1.5 trillion national debt run up by Gordon Brown’s deficit, gold sell-off, and the £120bn in PFI liabilities created by the man regarded by many economists as ‘The Worst Chancellor in History’.

The doctors, nurses, scientists and engineers we desperately need would be welcomed into our country under the points-based, Australian-style immigration policy proposed by UKIP. Building of affordable housing in our inner city areas by private developers should be encouraged by Development Zones, and controlled by locally accountable Planning Committees and Officers.

The real tragedy is that this Labour-induced triple-whammy of wage-compression, high cost of resources and high-demand on our Public Services hits those at the bottom of our society the hardest. Shame on Labour.

Cllr. Stuart Hutton CEng MIET.

UKIP Crewe and Nantwich.