The curious incident of Miss Shah.
Living in the north and being a member of the Conservative party’s earned me a lot of stick over the past year or so, from people who’ve all been tricked into turning commie by Che Guevara T-shirts and movies from a confused Michael Moore about made millions of $$$$$ out of the capitalist system and they get the impression we simply don’t care – which simply isn’t the case. I’m angry at the politicians and policies which have caused chavs to become stuck in a poverty trap. People aren’t born benefit scroungers. People who are stuck in the poverty trap human just like you and me. We have enormous low quality council estates, without existing job markets and without transport links. We created a benefit regime that penalises people who take the plunge of going into work, they all hit the north the most especially in times of recession. Is it any wonder that comments like this leave me fuming?
The North East has come in for a rough time over the last 30 years. The sad thing is that, during the miners strike, both sides were right in their own way. Maybe the industry needed to go. It was dirty, that’s a certainty, and the environment has improved. Even so, you have to sympathise with the miners, and other workers, who just wanted a job and to work - to support their families. It was during Thatcher’s time however that Sunderland got the Nissan car plant (a major employer and the most efficient car plant in Europe) and major shopping centres such as the MetroCentre, providing most of the employment for the region but the region still struggles and nothing has been done to help the region in the last 13 years, with money from Whitehall being wasted on ‘regeneration’ projects that have only put us into more dire circumstances and white elephants so that the folk down in London, those that ‘work in the’ political sector’ (That’s a shot at you Miss Shah) can claim they’ve done a good job.
I don’t think really think this is the fault of Miss Shah, she’s simply a creation of what our centralised political system in recent years has come to produce. When the people sitting in London never come into contact with local communities is it any wonder they’re so aloof and make comments like this? Is it any wonder that so many bad decisions get made that leave regions like my own up the creek? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better argument for localism…