Coastal View & Moor News Issue 19


Your Voice In Parliament Tom Blenkinsop MP


Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland


Mike’s fund set to make £100,000 M


ike Findley MBE, a former Redcar and Cleveland Councillor, who puts


his own battle with Motor Neurone Disease aside to raise funds for his charity has so far raised £98,000.


Mike launched his MND fund in 2005, and through hard work and determination has raised funds for much needed research as well the MND Care Centre at James Cook University Hospital.


I had the pleasure of taking part in the sponsored walk last year to draw awareness to the launch of Motor Neurone Disease Fund Awareness Day.


Mike will also be holding an event at the Coatham Bowl on Saturday 25th February to celebrate his MND Fund reaching £100,000. It’s called “Rockin for MND” and tickets are £5. Well done Mike and keep up the fantastic work.


Guisborough hospital: Chaloner ward closure


P


lans to close the Chaloner Ward at Guisborough Primary Care Hospital


have emerged, and the fact the Government is allowing the closure of the ward could, I fear, spell the eventual end of the hospital. Already the maternity service has been lost. This further ward closure would only leave a residual outpatient service and the Priory Ward on the site.


I think there is a not-so-hidden agenda carrying the terrible potential of a future total closure of Guisborough Hospital. Nationally 56,000 NHS staff are planned to


be sacked by Cameron, and what we see at Guisborough is a local picture of a national scandal. I do not believe redundancies there can be written off.


I’ll be raising this issue again on the fl oor of the House of Commons and asking why the Government is spending £3 Billion of taxpayers’ money to close local health services. We must stand up as a community for our local Guisborough hospital as we did for Guisborough’s Royal Mail Delivery Offi ce against Government cuts.


Get behind BASH S


cores of local protestors gathered on the 28th December at Lockwood Primary School, Boosbeck to march to the abandoned former abattoir to oppose plans to reopen it, and I marched with them as I agree with the residents.


BASH set up and ran by local residents have been fi ghting their corner really well against real adversity and have met with me regarding the village’s cause.


The main issue now is to contact the new owner of the site and try to persuade him to use the land for a residential development rather than reopen it as a slaughterhouse. Previous attempts to contact him by myself


and others have not had a reply; however, we hope to meet him early in January. The site is right in the heart of the village and is really close to new residential properties – in some cases just a matter of meters away!


Residents who lived in Boosbeck when the original slaughterhouse was open remember that it was particularly grim because of the smells and the noises associated with the business.


Myself, and Cllr David Williams will be meeting with offi cers from the council, to persuade the site’s new owner to drop the idea of a slaughterhouse.


Contact Tom


Please do not hesitate to contact me with your questions or concerns. I aim to reply to all enquiries as quickly as I can.


Write: Tom Blenkinsop MP, Harry Tout House, 8 Wilson St. Guisborough TS14 6NA. email: info@tomblenkinsop.com Phone 01287 610878 Fax 01287 631894. Twitter:http://twitter.com/tomblenkinsop


9 Saltburn Hazelgrove Caravan Park I


n writing this article I had hoped I would have a positive message to tell. Only recently Hazelgrove Caravan Owner Association had, we thought, a constructive meeting with the Caravan park owners Tingdene about future business arrangements on site.


This meeting, according to NACO (National Association of Caravan Owners) was unprecedented, in that it was the fi rst between caravan owners and caravan park owners. However, it is quite apparent that Tingdene have decided to cast a lot of the good will generated at that meeting, out of the window. I continue to meet with representatives


from the Owners Association about their ongoing concerns. However, a lot of the problems on the site go back to the inherent problems of the sale of the land and how Tingdene can use it. These problems date back to the original sale in 2007, when Cllr Chris Abbott’s and Cllr Val Halton’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat and Independent controlled council sold the site to LIDO leisure at a much reduced price to what it had been valued at.


In any case, the fact remains Tingdene owe a duty of care to their customers, and I will be pursuing this in parliament.


East Cleveland hardest Cameron hits


Redcar and Cleveland is the hardest hit Council in the country, due to Cameron and Clegg’s cuts to our area.


Redcar and Cleveland will receive £23.74 less per person, Middlesbrough will receive £27.97 less per person and Hartlepool will receive £46.74 less per person next year. Are we all in this together? No, quite clearly.


Scores of councils in the South will actually receive MORE money per person next year due to Cameron and Clegg’s gerrymandering of your taxes. This has meant Redcar and Cleveland Council have had to put council tax up by 3.5%. Middlesbrough’s independent Mayor Ray Mallon has also had to put Middlesbrough’s council tax up by 3.5%, and Tory and Liberal Democrat council’s in the North are deliberately holding back as they know they have to put council tax up as well, due to their Government’s draconian cuts.


Lib Dem Cumbrian Cllr Brendan Jameson, and Leader of South Lakeside District Council says “The Government is offering us a one-year grant of £204,000 but the knock on effect is that we would forego a potential income of £200,000 in subsequent years.” He goes on to say “To put South Lakeside


District Council’s fi nances back in the position they would have been without the grant, our proportion of the council tax would need to increase by 5.1 per cent.” Also take Lib Dem Councillor Maureen Rigg, she says: “Do we act with fi scal prudence and vote to raise the council tax to a level which will enable services to be reduced gradually and in a well planned way? Or, do we act with political expediency and vote for the thing which will sound good to most of the voters who don’t know and don’t want to know the detail of local government settlements?” Let us all not forget either, that Tory and Liberal Democrat Councillors, when in power in Redcar and Cleveland, put your Council Tax up by 4.9% in 2004, up 5.9% in 2005 and up 4.7% in 2006. These increases were all way, way, way above infl ation at the time, and they simultaneously cut deep into local services, when economic times were far better.


What is clear is that the North East, and Redcar and Cleveland in particular, are the taking the brunt of these forced Tory cuts when more affl uent areas in the South are actually getting budget increases from Cameron, at our expense! I hardly call that fair.


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