Your actions shout so loudly I can’t hear your words

Goggle Cllr Watts, leader of Bolsover DC and you’ll soon find him indulging in some rather pathetic anti-Thatcher rhetoric. May-be that’s because we have to go back 30 years to find any remnants of socialism in his life. Both of them have uttered some distasteful words but how do their actions compare?

Thatcher famously flogged Council houses at a discount, she managed to shift well over one million during her time, but thirty years on the concept of socially rented housing is still around and needed more than ever. So what has Watts and co done? The rent increases they have pushed through last year coupled with the one they are proposing this year amounts to an average of nearly 15%, that means rents doubling every 10 years, during the biggest recession in our lifetime. With policies like this Watts will finally do what Thatcher failed to do and make consign Council housing to history? To make matters worse the Council doesn’t even need the money, this year the Housing account is predicted to take over £5M more in income than it needs in expenditure. The money will all go to the bank with the balances doubling over the next three years.

Thatcher allowed some of the money from Council houses sales to be used to build new Council houses, Watts has a better idea. He’s making so much money from rents that he proposes to use £1M this year rising to up to £1.7M year to build new council houses. Does it matter where the money comes from so long as the houses are built? Yes it does – paying for new council houses from the rents of current tenants is like asking just current patients to pay for hospitals or families to pay for schools. We should all contribute to the cost of new housing, that way we also make sure the rents remain affordable.

Another Thatcher legacy was the poll-tax – by trying to levy a flat rate tax she made sure that the poor made a disproportionately large contribution and protected the lifestyles of the rich. Bolsover under Watts’s leadership have designed and even more oppressive scheme: forcing every working age person on Council tax benefit to pay 8.5% of the bill. This imposes an additional tax paid only by the very poorest in our community and use the money to subsidise the highest basic allowances of any District Council in the country as well as the £1.4M cost of refurbishing the Council’s palatial new offices at Clowne.

Finally Thatcher of course said there is no such thing as society, and not to be out-done Watts is making sure that there is no such thing as a Community, by personally proposing the closure of all community houses in the District unless some Parish Council, rich benefactor or fairy godmother comes forward to pay for them!

If you still prefer words to actions Councillor Watts – here’s an idea. Why not sign-up to the pledges that your colleagues have made on must prefer words to action Cllr Watts how about signing the statement on http://councillorsagainstcuts.org? Its launched by members of your own party who haven’t forgotten what the Labour party is supposed to be about. Have a word with them, you might that you don’t have to leave your ideals in the past.