Beating heart of town
I REFER to the article re Phil Meadows and the second Eston Mural (The Gazette, 05.07.22).
Murals are like Marmite, you either love or hate them.
Regardless of your views I feel compelled to respond to Phil Meadow’s comment, “...just local people coming together and creating an overall feeling of wellness for the Eston residents”.
Really? As an Eston girl, during my lifetime one of my most vivid memories of Eston was the Eston Residents Association, 25 years of community work (retiring at the end of 2019).
Hardworking, passionate Eston people, to whom I would like to pay tribute, especially those who we have sadly lost in the last couple of years.
What did this voluntary association do? There is not enough space in this paper to reiterate all, (along with continually fighting all the years for the regeneration of our town centre), but to name a few, brought the Iron and Steel heritage story of Eston back to the local and national forefront in so many ways. An Association that won countless national Britain and Northumbria in Bloom awards, that created iron and steel features, including a heritage trail around the town. An association that produced and delivered our own community newspaper for years, created the town’s heritage garden.
You just have to take a walk around Eston to see the legacy that the Association left. Where were this Remembrance Committee and Mr Meadows during this past 25 years of Eston’s history, for it seems to have been airbrushed out?
As the chairperson of Eston Residents’ Association for 25 years, I felt I would be doing a great disservice if at this time I did not pay tribute to all the hardworking members of the Association’s committee, including their families. For they were the beating heart of the community for 25 years.
ANN HIGGINS, (Chairperson for 25 years, Eston Residents
Association)
Let’s look at who funds who and why
COLIN Hatton tells us the “many facts and figures highlighted by the Conservatives”, reveal, shock and horror, that the RMT give money to the Labour Party (feedback, 04.07.22).
This is some scoop, or would be if we overlook the fact that the Labour Party was formed by the Trade Union movement.
And this begs the question, who funds the Conservative Party?
This of course opens up a huge can of worms.
Colin also shoots himself in the foot again by asking who pays to settle the rail dispute. Whilst workers have suffered real pay reductions over the last three years the bosses cream off handsome profits.
It has been reported that in 2020 CEOs of the six biggest train companies took home a combined salary of £5m.
The UK’s largest train operator First Group, boasted to investors that profits were ahead of expectation and handed its shareholders £500m in December last year.
And the point about MPs like Andy McDonald serving his constituents?
Well, I think it’s fair to say he will be doing a much better job than the many self-serving Tory MPs, like the disgraced Owen Paterson.