Living in Northumberland and being either a reader of the Regional,
County-wide, local press reports or most forms of social media you can’t have
failed to notice the continual battering that Amble and its satellite village
of Warkworth have received because their Conservative Town and County
Councillor who is the Cabinet Member for healthy lives and the Counties
military champion has been dragging the area into disrepute.
He has achieved this notoriety on behalf of his constituents through
speaking his ultra right wing mind about what he perceives as the lack of
indicators towards those who are poor and the lack of signage towards the
problems faced by those who find themselves caught up in the poverty trap and
the current Governments utter incapability of managing an economy larger than a
wicker basket of veg.
Councillor Jeff Watson told the Guardian newspaper that he denied the UK
had issues with malnutrition as he did not see “people dying on the streets” in
his area.
His area? He lives in a large house in Amble West on an estate of
equally large homes and exudes wealth in the way he dresses, the car he drives
and the way he acts in public. But the Town he lives in has suffered from high
levels of deprivation and needs for decades. It relies on the fishing, summer
retail and tourism trade with the pre brexit promises from Councillor Watson
and his ultra right wing colleagues in both Government and Northumberland
County Hall, who walked away when the fishing industry was the first to be lied
to by the Tories in Westminster.
The Guardian didn’t ask his views on those claiming Universal Credit and
other benefits although his superior-being image is certainly coloured by his
right wing links and beliefs they probably didn’t need to ask however his
attitude and answers reproduced in his local newspaper illustrate that he
doesn’t care.
Being a leading member on a Council which acts in secrecy and denies
access to information that would enable correct and proper scrutiny of the
Tories spend on such things as healthy lives to take place and as its
undergoing a number of high level investigations into what has gone on in the
recent past. Councillor Watson should follow the advice of Wansbeck’s Labour MP
Ian Lavery who called for Coun Watson to resign from his cabinet position.
In a letter to council leader Glen Sanderson, he wrote: “To be frank, I
found the video to be a disgrace. The levels of child poverty in the North East
is growing rapidly, to the point where we have the highest levels of child
poverty in the country.
Has he taken that
advice? Not up to press, as he needs the cash from his cabinet post to keep his
pensions topped up to be able to afford the rose coloured glasses that he scans
the world around his mansion with!
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