Dear West Country Voices,
Here’s my list of reasons NOT to vote Conservative at the Tiverton and Honiton by-election.
- Austerity – 10+ years of needless ‘measures’ in a country with the 6th largest economy (GDP) in the world. Hit the poorest hardest.
- Brexit – it’s not done and it never will be; it was always a stupid idea. Tiverton & Honiton farming and fishing communities were sold a lie, and opportunities to travel, learn, and prosper have been stolen from us all.
- Covid – the Government really didn’t get any of the ‘big calls’ right Over 180,000 in the UK are now dead, schools have been left to deal with it all themselves, no HEPA air filters, no FFP2 masks, and little/ no consideration of Long Covid. Add to this, the Corruption (including £37bn spaffed on defunct test & trace) and the current Cost of Living crisis
- David Davis: “There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside”
- Two huge points here: Environment – COP 26 was nothing more than hot air. Economy – never let it again be said that “the one thing Tories do is manage the economy”. UK now has the lowest predicted growth of all G20 countries. And don’t forget the £11bn of tax-payers money Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been accused of squandering by paying too much interest servicing the Government’s debt.
- Foodbanks (UK has 2,000 more than 11 yrs ago, more than all the branches of McDonald’s) plus a Failed Food Strategy, including choosing not to extend free school meals to those in need – no child should go hungry.
- Gove + Grenfell (72 people died, not one of whom were “lacking common sense”, Jacob Rees-Mogg. Five years on, nobody’s been prosecuted, and still properties exist where a similar tragedy can happen again.
- Hancock & Hunt, destroying the NHS
- I: I care about UK too much to let it continue with a Tory government tearing our country and democracy apart
- Johnson & Javid
- Kwarteng – attacking the unions; back in 2012 he co-authored – with Raab, Patel and Truss – the undeservedly little known Britannia Unchained in which it was asserted that British workers “are among the worst idlers in the world.”
- Lies, lies, lies & Levelling Up make believe, directed at Tory marginal seats
- Mad Nads, ‘nuff said
- NHS – the Tories are destroying it, privatising it, profiting from it. It’s ours, not theirs.
- Oligarch money… Russian money helps fund the Conservatives and Obstacles to trade via Brexit
- Partygate (we’re not “moving on”) + Priti Patel + PPE scandal (£10bn of defective, unusable PPE procured, much via a Tory-preferred and so-called VIP channel)
- Queen – lied to over prorogation
- Rwanda (inhumane, breaking international law and potentially a pretext for taking UK out of European Court of Human Rights) + Raab & Rees-Mogg
- Sunak…super-rich and super out of touch with real people
- Truss + Tractor porn
- Ukraine – refugee response too slow and too divisive
- Vice
- Water pollution – pumping raw sewage into our seas and rivers + Williamson
- X : the crossed out, reneged-on manifesto promises: national insurance increase, triple lock gone, 40 new hospitals, Northern Powerhouse rail, etc etc…
- Y Why on earth would you vote for this lot of charlatans?
- Zahawi…paid by an oil company, putting forward a frighteningly authoritarian schools bill.
Yours sincerely,
Linda Stretch, constituent
