Green and Pleasant

I warmly applaud the attempt to classify as a village green the site preferred, though certainly not by the local community, for the new Academy in Consett, an Academy rightly sponsored by a university, as it happens by the university that employs me. Village greens are a good thing.

As are Parish Councils. The fact is that with a Parish Council itself possessed of Quality Status and the power of well being, as Lanchester's now is, Consett would have been in a far stronger position to resist the present demented scheme, not least since the acquisition of such additional responsibilities is conditional on the proven capacity of the members and officers. It would be far easier to contend that somewhere was a village green if it were owned as such by the Parish Council. Call it a Town Council if that would make feel you better, since it doesn't make any practical difference.

But didn't I oppose the creation of Stanley Town Council? At that time, yes, because its only purpose was to get one over on Derwentside District Council on the part of Kevan Jones and his supporters. They had no desire for it to do anything, and were adamant that all services then provided in Stanley by the County or District Council should continue to be so at the expense of the entire County or District, regardless of the situation in other parished areas; most unfortunately, that is still the case. They co-operated with the BNP, and at least allowed, if not caused, illegally racist literature to be distributed.

The BNP had expected to win seats, although its failure to do so is one of the many examples of how that organisation's base of support simply was not the white working class, of which there could not be a more striking example than Stanley, even before it gave up the only reason why anyone had ever voted for it. However, that Council is not, and has never been, under Labour overall control. I hope that Kevan Jones and others are very proud of that, especially since, having been rejected by the people of Stanley in a referendum, it was imposed anyway by central government as the prince of Jones's vote in favour of ninety-day detention without charge (not trial, charge). The Chief Whip at that time was one Hilary Armstrong.

Do you want an MP who knows all of this and a lot more besides, rather than a first-term Parish Councillor who became politically active at any level in her fifties when she stood for the Parish to make up the numbers on the same day as her similarly neophyte husband was trying for a District Council seat (unsuccessfully, despite the full support of the Labour Party machine)? Do you want there to be at least one MP who understands the proper sphere of local government within which MPs should interfere as little as possible, both the siting of the Consett Academy and the creation of Stanley Town Council being obvious examples, and who believes that MPs should instead be in the chamber rather more often than PMQs and when the division bell sounds, doing what MPs are paid to do while trusting councillors and social workers to get on with what councillors and social workers are paid to do?

If so, then do get in touch - davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. And do take advantage of the PayPal button on this blog, which of course protects your privacy while putting me under no possible obligation to you personally, since I cannot know who you are.