Criticism is not fair

Referring to the article quoting Councillor George Howe in the September 11 edition of the Echo.

It ill behoves a councillor for any ward to criticise the ward he is elected to represent as Councillor Howe has done twice lately.

He first criticised Seaburn now Sea Road.

He says that “This is not the Fulwell it used to be” and decries the lack of police presence.

Has he forgotten that his government have reduced police numbers across the country by 21,000 officers the heaviest cuts of around 1,000 affecting Northumbria Police?

His son is a high-ranking police officer and should be able to tell him the situation as it is.

Fulwell is not in the middle of some gargantuan crime wave and compared with many other areas crime is low.

Councillor Howe’s alarmist statements about people being afraid to leave their homes is an example of him trying to make news.

It is far from being the truth as we find when many people, many of them elderly attend functions at the local community centres and the library and the local social club.

His fearmongering isn’t helpful at all and places fear where it didn’t exist before.

Many things have changed for the worse since the Tory LibDem government introduced austerity as a political choice.

We now wait weeks for GP appointments, months and years for operations.

We have scant educational facilities, fire cover, foodbanks and cases of people actually starving because of benefit difficulties.

Council services are cut to the bone and this is simply because government funding has been reduced.

Please tell us Councillor Howe what you are doing about this situation being a member of one of the parties that caused this mess? (including Brexit, a Tory Lib Dem inspired fiasco).

In over 20 years are you able to tell us exactly what you and your colleagues have actually done for the Fulwell ward you obviously don’t like very much?

Answers on the back of a postage stamp please!

As you also live in Hendon ward do you not notice what goes on around you there?

I hope he thinks twice before coming out with any more of these crass statements that do nothing but prove how out of touch he is. Margaret Beck