WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND?
Letter
CATASTROPHIC BENEFIT CUTS
Dear HIP
Well done for your front-page coverage in issue 274 of the government’s planned cuts to disability benefits and the likely impact of these on disabled people and their families in Hastings and beyond.
We’ve been horrified by these plans, which the Department for Work and Pensions’ own impact assessment predicts would drive 300,000 people into poverty, including 50,000 children.
As we know from our work, disability and fuel poverty are closely linked. Indeed, 72% of the thousands of people that Energise Sussex Coast helped through our free energy advice service last year had a disability or long-term health issue.
The government has implied that the impact of the cuts will be offset by £1 billion of employment support measures “to help disabled and long-term sick people back into work”.
However, it is also planning to have MPs vote on the cuts before the Office for Budget Responsibility has even had a chance to assess how effective – if at all – these measures are likely to be. (When the OBR assessed the previous government’s now-abandoned plans to restrict disability benefits, it concluded that only 3% of those affected would find paid work.)
In reality, as the disability charity Scope notes, these cuts would be “a catastrophe for disabled people’s living standards and independence”. We urge your readers to use writetothem.com to contact Hastings’ MP, Helena Dollimore, and urge her to change her mind and vote against them.
Gabriel Carlyle Energise Sussex Coast
From our website
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Christopher Dodwell’s article Follow the Money in HIP Issue 274 should be blown up to poster-size and plastered all over town.
If you look into the cumulative actions against local democracy by the last few governments, you can see the long road to the demise of community-oriented councils in favour of big-business developers. Once you see that, it finally becomes clear that the one and only reason we’re now being tipped headlong into a county unitary council with a far-off mayor in charge is that it’s the system best suited to ‘Special Economic Zones’ – that is, giant, corporate, business estates acting as tax havens for the wealthy.
The real blinder in all this is that the last few line-ups we’ve had at Hastings Borough Council have put their heads down and tried to run the council as though they still had funds and an ability to act, the main result of which was to persuade large swathes of the community that it is totally useless and might as well be scrapped.
It’s not too late to fight back. Fill in the consultation if you want to – might as well, as the current oh-so-biddable council leadership agreed to fund it. Say ‘no’ to the mayor, ‘no’ to putting everything at county level, and ‘yes’ to one of the ‘options’ with an element of local representation. The government won’t be bound by that consultation, though. It’s also necessary to explain the nature of the con any way we can, until everyone gets it.
Thank you, Christopher Dodwell for the best contribution yet to that effort, and thank you, HIP, for publishing it.
Kay Green
From our website
ALDERMEN ABOLISHED
A Lost Transport of Delight in HIP 274 was a fascinating article, I knew nothing about this! A couple of minor errors, though. Firstly, Hastings had (and still has) a mayor, not a lord mayor. And, secondly, councillors were not known as aldermen at that time. Councillors were elected in the same way they are now. Aldermen were appointed to the council by the elected councillors. Aldermen were abolished in the 60s, because the system was open to widespread abuse, with local businessmen bribing councillors to appoint them as aldermen. They had the same functions and responsibilities as councillors, but without the responsibilities to an electorate in a particular ward.
Peter Chowney
Letter
What future for Azur?
Dear HIP
Twenty years ago or so, large amounts of public money was spent on eye catching projects such as the Sussex Exchange off Queensway, The Bridge in Ore and Azur in St Leonards. None of them are flourishing as they were imagined to – probably because the money was dropped from on high for capital spending without proper planning for revenue income. Azur is a particularly prominent example of how a project to create regeneration has turned within 20 years into degeneration and dereliction. It was built with expensive materials but it is also a high maintenance building. The builders were obviously out of their depth since the funnel shaped skylights have been placed so that two funnels point in one direction while one points in another direction. The architect I understand has disowned it and it is not on his website. The vandalised wreckage of the building now serves no purpose apart from obscuring the magnificent listed colonnade of James Burton which has flourished for 200 years -never mind 20. Why not dismantle Azur and maintain the original Sidney Little Marina Pavilion on the ground floor which is eminently usable still. The expensive coloured glass used in Azur could be recycled to Bottle Alley and perhaps the staircase down from the promenade could be remodelled as a modern entrance with signage to draw customers.
Robin Holtom
From our website
IGNORANT DESTRUCTION
On the front page of issue 274, you asked readers to share their views about graffiti.
I moved to Hastings seven years ago, and what breaks my heart and disgusts me on a regular basis is all the graffiti. No sooner is Bottle Alley repainted in the pastel shades the great architect Sidney Little wanted, than some little swine disfigures the walls and pillars with spray paint or black marker pens. The gracious shelters are also regularly vandalised. Graffiti is worse than anti-social, it is wilful and ignorant destruction.
Whilst we are on the subject of Sidney Little’s heritage, cannot the lido be reconstructed? Its demolition was a prime example of scandalous municipal vandalism. But that’s another topic again.
Roger Lewis
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