Owl has been sent this copy of the Summer 2023 edition of the Local Newspaper – EAST DEVON ECHO
Chicken Run or Wild Goose Chase?
2 thoughts on “Chicken Run or Wild Goose Chase?”
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Owl has been sent this copy of the Summer 2023 edition of the Local Newspaper – EAST DEVON ECHO
Comments are closed.
East Devon Watch 
If I understand Chris Bryant MP correctly, from his excellent book ‘ Code of Conduct’, levelling up funding must indeed have the support of the constituency MP.
Well, its difficult to imagine a local MP not accepting funds, funds that will by the way, be less than the amounts government have cut from council direct funding.
But to whom should credit go? Some research suggests these funds go to help MPs whose seats are becoming a tad dodgy to hold on to rather than to those in greatest need.
Bryant’s work is well referenced as you might expect and he reports, ‘ of the forty five successful Towns Fund bids in 2021, seventeen went to ‘priority towns’, twenty-eight to ‘medium priority’ towns with seventy nine per cent to towns in Conservative held constituencies’ ( p110). Bryant goes into considerable detail about how and what influences these successful bids and one is left in no doubt that any award has little or nothing to do with need, nor the work of the sitting MP, but many other factors that are politically based. It seems the Tory world revolves around what we might think of as bribery in one form or another.
Hence I suggest, the credit for any additional East Devon funding lies with Claire Wright who turned a very strong 50 year old Conservative safe seat into one of the most marginal seats in the country. It was Claire and her team that put the frighteners on CCO with a level of decency and honesty they just didn’t comprehend. Their answer? Throw money our way and claim it was ‘Simon wot dun it for us’ as MP 30 bob might say.
We must not be fooled by misleading Tory propaganda that is now so desperate it dare not speak its name, nor clearly express its origins ( now often Tufton Street -https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63039558) and is ditching their traditional blue to appear to be other parties material and using their colours – and neither must we be taken in by Tory faux Indies.
Thank you Claire.
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