Tynedale: Out of step
Letters to Hexham Courant
Published at 07:36, Wednesday, 05 June 2013
‘MARXIST state will hinder Tynedale’ and ‘Call for town manager to put pride back in Hexham’, (Courant, May 17, 2013).
Now the Tories are the underdogs at county council level again, Coun. Peter Jackson accuses the newly elected Northumberland County Council of ‘creating a one-party Marxist state’, and he chooses to align himself with the Liberal Democrats. How kind!
Perhaps I can reassure him; he could move over to Hexham where the usual Tory autocracy reigns supreme. Coun. Terry Robson is now Hexham’s mayor, county councilor, town councilor, and at their first meeting of this regime, the five minute slot allocated for the town council to ‘hear from Hexham’s residents’ was missing from the agenda.
Also at this meeting, Coun. Robson proudly waved a blue ‘non-agenda item’ the so called ‘retailers’ 10 point action plan’, which reads out remarkably like a proposal for action on issues the retailers have been campaigning for ‘In Hexham; for Hexham’ long before Guy Opperman MP even appeared on the scene.
Hexham continues to be out of step with 21st century changes that are happening elsewhere in Northumberland.
If Hexham’s Conservative MP, Mayor, three county councilors, and 10 town councillors secure funding for a Hexham Town Centre Manager that would be amazing.
Coun. Peter Jackson could apply for the job and would no doubt welcome being unhindered by any democratic opposition.
Then the politicians could all sit back and rest on their laurels, as usual, with somebody else to blame for the demise of economic activity in Hexham.
BARBARA GRUNDEY,
Hexham
