FACEBOOK COMMENTS

WHAT you have been saying on our Facebook page

ANGER at proposed car parking charges on popular Great Harwood high street (November 30) Fred Williams: It’s a disgrace. Small town shops will suffer the most. Andy Oldham: One of the USP’s of Great Harwood is the plentiful free parking. This is a major draw to the town for people from across the area.

Introducing pay parking, which is totally unnecessary, and the no doubt heavy handed associated enforcement, will succeed in only one thing – driving people and trade away.

Any gain in parking fees will be outweighed by the subsequent loss of revenue from businesses leaving.

Take a look up and down the country.

Which towns are booming and which are failing?

Then look at those that restrict cars and penalise parking. It’s the same list. Kyle Corke: The council is finishing off the last surviving shops, I see.

They really want these small businesses to fail.

Moving the bus station so it’s no longer in the centre and now this. Eddie Beetham: Most people are using Tesco and online traders like eBay, Amazon etc.

Queen Street has little trade and what they get is folk who drop in on their way past to pick something up.

If they are charged anything for parking that trade will go elsewhere.

CALLS for new Hyndburn link road to ease congestion dismissed (November 30) Andy Oldham: Maybe they should spend this money on keeping the street lights switched on rather than helping a bus get back into the queue the bus lane caused? David Bates: They should make a through road at Junction 7 just for busses.

It will keeps the residents, Lancashire County Council and the Pennine Reach scheme happy. Sharon Graham: Forget bus lanes!

They need to concentrate on improving the ‘turning right’ filtering system at the Hare and Hounds junction.

There’s an accident there almost every week. Hassan Webb: The seeds were sown when Clayton was sawn in half by the M65 eliminating many route permutations.

There are simply not enough bridges across. IF I had had any involvement in Brexit I would like to think it would have been a success. Not the selfinflicted mess we have found ourselves in.

As a result, this week I was asked to vote both for and against by constituents for a multitude of reasons. During this whole process as a Remain voter, I largely refrained from a public commentary or criticising the government in Parliament. We voted to Leave and we must get on with that process. The public did not want Brexit frustrated and that is why I triggered Article 50 when asked to.

Whilst I have not said a lot in Parliament or public, I did attend hustings before the referendum and held a widely advertised Brexit update meeting this summer that was open to all members of the public. Hundreds of people have also written to me on Brexit and I have made sure they receive a response.

However, I, like the public, get fed up with vacuous or stupid slogans and propaganda – however I reserve my Brexit ire for Twitter.

I frequently criticise deluded liberal Remainers who argue immigration is good for our country. It isn’t. It lowers wages and drives down working conditions, denies opportunities such as in nursing and plunders third world countries of much-needed talent particularly in health care. We should invest in British workers.

I also criticise the other side, deluded Leavers who believe the economy and Britain will be better off outside the EU. It won’t.

Ending our current frictionless ‘roll on roll off’ and ‘just-in-time’ trade with our nearest geographical neighbour and replacing it with significant border checks, complex rules with business tariffs at all UK borders makes no business sense. It’s bananas. UK cars won’t sell in the EU with 10 per cent tariff on top plus a forest full of cross border red tape (with extra costs).

Neither will Britain begin trading with the world. On leaving the EU at the end of March, we will, in fact, rip up ALL our current EU free trade deals with the rest of the world putting us at a disadvantage - including the CETA free trade deal with Canada. On March 30, the UK status is minus the 66 EU Free Trade deals around the world and worse – we will be behind the EU in the queue for new ones. I do not fancy a Free Trade deal with India with more immigration as part of any deal.

Rules of origin and current inadequacies and disputes also risk the UK not being able to fully fall back on WTO. I have heard politicians’ slogans – they are as much worth to the average Hyndburn working family with a mortgage as a bag full of rusty nails. All the public are asking is please tell truth – but they are not getting it.

Had the vote gone ahead this week I would have voted against Theresa May’s deal. There are many reasons but in short, it is a UK surrender document that proposes to take down the Union Jack and replace it with a white flag.

It was Theresa May who said: “Nothing is agreed till it’s all agreed” yet this ‘deal’ is an exit deal with only vague outlines of any UK-EU future Trade Treaty to be agreed over the next five to 10 years.

The UK locked in with no means of exit and the EU holding all of the negotiating cards. The result will be a crap deal after about eight or 10 painful years. In other words with the UK having no voice, no vote and no veto – having surrendered it.

This deal also threatens the break-up of Britain.

I simply will not accept any part of our country (Northern Ireland) being carved off into a separate status governed exclusively by the EU and Dublin. It’s no good Theresa May trying to con the British people about this. Our future trade deal which is yet to be negotiated must be concluded within two years or Northern Ireland is handed back into the EU and economically governed exclusively by Dublin, not the UK.

Scotland will also demand the same status or demand independence.

It matters because, in the referendum (1998) on the sovereignty of Northern Ireland (the Good Friday Agreement enshrined in UK law), people there were promised that firstly, Northern Ireland would remain aligned to the Republic (and the EU).

Secondly, it remain within the UK – and thirdly that nothing would happen in Northern Ireland without their express consent. This has kept the peace. That (first) referendum result has now been ripped up, the people of Northern Ireland betrayed and it has created this constitutional mess. The controversial ‘backstop’.

People have written to me in equal numbers on the meaningful vote to say; “Like the other 17.4m people I voted for Brexit ... and Leave means Leave – vote against”. They have also written to me to say; “Like the other 17.4m people I voted for Brexit ... and this deal delivers on the referendum result – vote for it”. Both cannot be true. The majority of letters to me however say; “Brexit is a mess, vote against”. Neither twist nor stick are an option.