Help for Fayrepack victims
The collapse of Fayrepack threatens to adversely affect this year's Christmas for many families in Cumbria. But as is so often the case, a problem within a community brings out much of the best in it's people, in both imagination and concern, as people look for a solution.
Whitehaven Credit Union, which is a non-profit community savings and lending organisation, has been advertising a savings scheme targetted to to help Fayrepack victims and ensure that their Christmas celebrations are not entirely ruined. And a group of Cumbrian ladies have emulated the W.I. "Calendar girls" by bringing out a calendar to help the Fayrepack victims - on sale now for £5, all of which goes to help the victims as they were printed free of charge by Print Express of Whitehaven.
All the local MPs have backed calls from Cumbrian MP David McLean for a criminal investigation into the collapse. While I think this is right, I wonder if the Labour MPs who backed this call have thought through the implications if the principle of prosecuting people who take money from people but don't deliver on their contracts were applied to politicians who make election promises, impose taxes to pay for those promises when elected, but fail to deliver ?
Tony Blair would certainly be in even bigger trouble. He's already facing an interview with the police over the "cash for peerages" scandal, but if politicans were accountable for broken promises he would have to help the police with their inquiries on at least two more grounds. First would be his promise in 1999 that everyone would have access to an NHS dentist within five years. Seven years on, not only are thousands of Cumbrians who were then without an NHS dentist still looking: in fact thousands of those who did have an NHS dentist have lost that service.
And then there was Mr Blair's promise to students in 1997 that he would not introduce tuition fees and in 2001 that he would not increase them with top-up fees. Not only did he break these promises, he described the bill to do so as "central" to his government's programme.
Of course our local MPs would not escape either. Jamie Reed, then the Labour candidate for Copeland and now the MP, stated on the front page of the Whitehaven News during the election campaign that there was "no threat whatsoever to West Cumberland Hospital."
Is it any wonder that people like the Carlisle ladies turn to each other rather than our politicians to put right the injustice which has been done to them.
Trust in politics needs to be rebuilt in this country. But this is much easier to say than to do.
Whitehaven Credit Union, which is a non-profit community savings and lending organisation, has been advertising a savings scheme targetted to to help Fayrepack victims and ensure that their Christmas celebrations are not entirely ruined. And a group of Cumbrian ladies have emulated the W.I. "Calendar girls" by bringing out a calendar to help the Fayrepack victims - on sale now for £5, all of which goes to help the victims as they were printed free of charge by Print Express of Whitehaven.
All the local MPs have backed calls from Cumbrian MP David McLean for a criminal investigation into the collapse. While I think this is right, I wonder if the Labour MPs who backed this call have thought through the implications if the principle of prosecuting people who take money from people but don't deliver on their contracts were applied to politicians who make election promises, impose taxes to pay for those promises when elected, but fail to deliver ?
Tony Blair would certainly be in even bigger trouble. He's already facing an interview with the police over the "cash for peerages" scandal, but if politicans were accountable for broken promises he would have to help the police with their inquiries on at least two more grounds. First would be his promise in 1999 that everyone would have access to an NHS dentist within five years. Seven years on, not only are thousands of Cumbrians who were then without an NHS dentist still looking: in fact thousands of those who did have an NHS dentist have lost that service.
And then there was Mr Blair's promise to students in 1997 that he would not introduce tuition fees and in 2001 that he would not increase them with top-up fees. Not only did he break these promises, he described the bill to do so as "central" to his government's programme.
Of course our local MPs would not escape either. Jamie Reed, then the Labour candidate for Copeland and now the MP, stated on the front page of the Whitehaven News during the election campaign that there was "no threat whatsoever to West Cumberland Hospital."
Is it any wonder that people like the Carlisle ladies turn to each other rather than our politicians to put right the injustice which has been done to them.
Trust in politics needs to be rebuilt in this country. But this is much easier to say than to do.
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