We're facing up to reality

TERRY Banfield (Feb 5) digs himself yet deeper into a dogmatic hole. I was proud to march against the cuts and for ‘A Future that Works’ on October 20, alongside my Labour and trade union colleagues. I look forward to a government that ends self-defeating austerity and instead looks to bring growth and jobs to our economy, as that is the only way to solve the deficit in the long-term.

However, we need to face up to the realities of the financial situation we are in.

The maths is a fact, not an opinion – in Torfaen, we must save £7.6 million this year. We just can’t stick our heads in the sand and play fantasy politics with peoples’ lives, jobs and homes. We have a clear choice. Either we get on with the job and help make savings with as little pain as possible for those we serve.

Or we sit on our hands whilst others take over the budget of the council, leaving us to scuttle round in taxis handing out redundancy notices whilst local services suffer. If Mr Banfield really thinks that would be the principled thing to do, I despair for him. Either way, I’m confident both of the pragmatic Labour socialists he mentions - Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan - would agree with me!

Anthony Hunt Greenhill Road, Griffithstown

Comments(7)

welshmen says...
7:13pm Fri 8 Feb 13

Labour thanks for the crap you left this Country in, you can't blame the whole economic situation for our position, YOU flooded our lobour market with foreigners who work for less than our workers are used to, when you have a mortgage a couple of kidds and you don't get a rise for four years or more meanwhile ever thing you need to put a roof over your families head and put food in there bellies all of a sudden your one of the poor in the country, i hope i never ever see a Labour Government in power, war crimes against Labour leaders awaits them....

welshmen says...
7:41pm Fri 8 Feb 13

Keir Hardie and Nye Bevan would despise what the Labour Party Government have done to this Country....

Multiculturalism dos'n't work, harmony dos'n't work, diversity dos'n't work,most of the people who Labour welcomed here can't even speak English, go to your local intake school and see the pupils, i feel sorry for the teachers who having been taught to teach to mainly British pupils have to take teaching time to a class of the world
languages....Million
s of immigrants came to this Country, took jobs that our own could have done, sent £385 Billion back home,Money that should have been spent here + Child Benefit to children that don't even live here, yet its the working class and the poor of this Country who have to take the pain of -£ and don't use that old chestnut our unemployed wont do the work, it's the spin doctors who made sure that this was put forcibly to the Media to print and say especially the MARXIST BBC....

33daverave says...
8:08pm Fri 8 Feb 13

A friend went to Newport City Homes to try and register for a flat for her father.Guess what.Loads of people there house hunting and not one spoke English .Great.

I expect all these comments will be taken down soon.

tking says...
10:46am Sat 9 Feb 13

A lot of truth there Welshman, the Labour Party has never been a Socialist Party, and the door to "socialism" through Parliament has been firmly slammed shut by the "careerists" however the rich and much of the media and politicians across the world are trying to make us blame immigrants for cuts and unemployment, they hope this will deflect attention from the real culprits---the employers and bankers,there are a million more people unemployed today than four years ago, not because of a surge in immigration, its because the system across the world went into deep crisis with workers expected to pay for it, there is not a fixed cake of British wealth where less will go to people already resident if new people arrive, far from being a burden on the welfare state there are large areas of the health service and transport that would collapse without workers from abroad, about one fifth of people who do these vital jobs in the UK are form abroad, and with Housing millions of working people find it impossible to get a house but thats not because of migrants, its the lack of affordable council house building programmes stopped by this government and the control of resources by the ruling class,why do we have over 650,000 empty homes in England alone? Most are not racist but feel that immigration is "changing the culture of Britain" and that we are losing the "British way of life", so what is" British" culture?, right now an"alien" tribe has seized control with no mandate of British politics,a minority group who went to Eton and Oxford and then got jobs in the "city", these people dominate the cabinet, their culture?---strange pronouciation of words,nannies looking after chidren,playing weird games like Polo-- is totally foreign to most of us, but immigrants have improved many aspects of British life.

welshmen says...
11:25am Sat 9 Feb 13

tking, i agree with some of your expletives but as to the immigrants filling in for doctors, nurses, transport etc, in the first and second world wars we trained our own people to do what ever we were short off in the job's market, with this country still belonging to the Commonwealth its was inevitable that we would expect immigrants from these parts of the world, the bottom line i think is if this Country stopped giving better benefits to new immigrants 75% would go to the next better off country, i also would have expected to vote on weather we want more foreigners coming to the UK, we are only an Island, if i wanted to live in an Arab state i would have tried to move to one....

Llanmartinangel says...
12:53pm Sat 9 Feb 13

Both sides of the immigration debate have merit but the reality is that things like infrastructure and housing doesn't arrive out of a clear blue sky. They require money and planning. To expect us to be able to absorb people at the rates we have was never realistic. In addition, it's counter-intuitive to expect people to accept that we should treat all new arrivals, who have never contributed (and some who have no intention of), as we do those who have lived here all their lives. Those who do arrive and do not accept our culture and actively campaign against it, (religious freedom, women's rights, gay rights, tolerance of free speech etc) should always be deported. No exceptions. Ever.

welshmen says...
6:09pm Sat 9 Feb 13

Llanmartinangel wrote:
Both sides of the immigration debate have merit but the reality is that things like infrastructure and housing doesn't arrive out of a clear blue sky. They require money and planning. To expect us to be able to absorb people at the rates we have was never realistic. In addition, it's counter-intuitive to expect people to accept that we should treat all new arrivals, who have never contributed (and some who have no intention of), as we do those who have lived here all their lives. Those who do arrive and do not accept our culture and actively campaign against it, (religious freedom, women's rights, gay rights, tolerance of free speech etc) should always be deported. No exceptions. Ever.
How True....

click2find

About cookies

We want you to enjoy your visit to our website. That's why we use cookies to enhance your experience. By staying on our website you agree to our use of cookies. Find out more about the cookies we use.

I agree