Alternative York

I have sent this email (very slightly edited out of respect) to my MP, Hugh Bayley. I have told him I have published it online. I await a reply.

Dear Mr Bayley

Despite coming from a working class background I have never been able to associate my values and ideals with those of the Labour Party. When I first became politically aware in the early 1980’s I associated the Labour Party with public unrest, strikes and even worse, Ben Elton!

My father wouldn’t speak to me for months after he failed dismally to shoot down my teenage theory that Margaret Thatcher was offering the average man far more opportunities to prosper than Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock. He still clung to the idea that being wealthy was only marginally worse than being Hitler and that all money and property should be distributed equally between those who got up at 5am and went to work, and those who got up at 5pm to check they hadn’t soiled themselves and to open another can of Special Brew.

Now my reference to Special Brew was not a gratuitous dig at street drinkers and the fake disabled who claim benefits; it was in fact an introduction to my main gripe about Alistair Darling’s budget which, I suppose, can be looked at in two ways.

1) POSITIVELY: It is the final nail in Labour’s coffin and has guaranteed that they will be booted out of office at the next General Election

or

2) REALISTICALLY: The so-called, self-styled, party of the working class, the Labour Party, have sold out on the people who created them and, in a country where the cost of living continues to rise, have taxed by stealth the only pleasures left to the average man, a few pints of beer after work or a bottle of wine with his wife on an evening.

The Labour Party claim that by raising the tax on alcohol at 6% above inflation - and then by 2% above inflation for each of the next four years, that they are tackling binge drinking and addressing health concerns. This is not true. This disgraceful tax on responsible adults enjoying a legal pastime to help them unwind after a hard day (which is needed to try and take away the pain of the other increases in household costs under Labour) will boost Treasury coffers by £635m annually by 2010. I wonder what that money will be spent on? Tax relief for working families? The elderly? Housing for indigenous Britons? Health care for the poor? Better policing? Education? If so then maybe, just maybe, there can be some justification for the tax increase. In reality, however, none of this money is likely to be used for anything that will benefit the average family, unless, of course, that family happens to be from eastern Europe or Africa and is coming to Britain to escape whatever imagined horrors they are leaving behind in their homeland. Or perhaps to ease the awful life of a drug addict who has been failed so badly by society, and to whom we should all be in debt?

The main reason I don’t believe that this tax increase is specifically designed to tackle binge drinking and alcohol fuelled violence is because I can still go to my local One-Stop shop and buy a 2-litre bottle of “White Petrol” cider for £1.29, but I can’t buy a bottle of good quality wine at all because there isn’t enough room on the shelves for it in between the rows of liver-destroying liquid chemicals and the aforementioned Special Brew.

Now I always try and read between the lines of anything political and I think I have sussed out this policy. By making drinking in pubs unaffordable it should reduce the amount of alcohol related crime in the streets; thus negating the calls for more police on the said streets and justifying officers spending their shift doing racial awareness workshops instead of nicking scumbags.

It all starts to make sense doesn’t it? Once all the pubs have closed down then the empty buildings can be turned into hostels for the “White Petrol” brigade or be used to house even more foreigners! Genius! Mr Bayley, please have a walk down Lawrence Street, a street you should be familiar with from your time as an under-graduate at the University of York, and look at the boarded up pubs that can no longer survive because of your government. I was shocked to discover that you studied Social Policy at York as I, as a mature student, am also studying the same subject. I hope that my studies will help me bring far more benefits to society than you have as a Labour MP. I won’t even mention your voting record on war in Iraq compared to your rhetoric!

Anyway, at least Labour have defeated the Conservatives in one way. A pint has gone up by 25p in Fulford Conservative Club. I won’t be paying that so you win, I won’t drink in there other than when I have a snooker match. Unless, of course, you are planning on taxing indoor sports too?

By the way Mr Bayley, if you are planning on asking your secretary to send me a standard reply then please don’t bother. I would like you to either answer all of my points or admit that you can’t do so. I have published this email on my blog Rustneversleeps and will publish your reply, should I get one, in the public interest of your constituents.

Please would you also add me to your mailing list for your e-bulletin of all the great things that Labour are doing for the residents of York?

Regards

Steve Bradley

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 11:13 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.