My latest exchange in the Thurrock Gazette

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a letter to the Thurrock Gazette about my local MP’s column (or ignorant diatribe, if you prefer) about why she, in her infinite stupidity, voted to bomb Syria.  Someone took offence at the fact that I had a pop at ol’ Jackie Doyle-(I certainly have my)Price so I thought I’d post her letter defending JD-P along with my reply and the full, uncut version for comparison.

 

 

So Jane Hayward disagrees with my opinion on Jackie Doyle-Price?  Well, that's her prerogative but I do have to take issue with some of her statements.

“The welfare system needed an overhaul” – did it really?  I agree that some work needed to be done on the system but it didn’t need an overhaul, especially the way the Tories have done it.

“Hard-earned tax…handed over to people with no intention of helping themselves or the community” – really?  This is a very narrow and incorrect point of view based on the negative media portrayal of people on benefits and, if you popped your head out of your ivory tower for a moment and worked with some of the people on benefits, you’d realise just how wrong you are.

“Genuine cases of need are respected and helped” – interesting point of view although not exactly up-to-date on your facts.  I suppose the thousands of sick and disabled people who have died due to the welfare changes were respected enough to help them into an early grave.

Yes, the Falklands War (not invasion, as Ms Hayward put it; the Falklands were our territory) was not personally instigated by Thatcher but she made a great deal of personal mileage out of ‘her’ war to improve her waning popularity.  I agree with Ms Hayward on the Iraq debacle but then everyone knows Blair lied to make sure we invaded Iraq illegally.

“Commend Jackie Doyle-Price for her hard work”, etc, blah, blah.  Feel free to commend her, Ms Hayward, but that doesn’t mean that JD-P has worked hard or done anything to help local people.  Actually JD-P has gone out of her way to avoid dealing with her constituents on numerous occasions, ignores and does not represent the views of anyone she disagrees with (which is part of her job whether she likes it or not), has been abusive to at least one of her constituents (to my knowledge) and only ever takes up local issues that get her face plastered all over the local media because otherwise no one would know she exists.

If Jackie Doyle-Price was half the saint Ms Hayward paints her to be, she’d still be a blood-soaked Tory drone with very little to commend her.

Myles Cook (Mr), Argent Street, Grays

Why bombing Syria is wrong – in a nutshell

Until someone comes up with a bomb that only explodes when in the presence of its intended targets, there will always be the deaths of innocent people, euphemistically known as ‘collateral damage’ to ignore the reality of all the innocent victims.

As terrorists care as much about innocent victims as a Tory MP does, they will increasingly surround themselves with more non-combatants by either moving into areas with a high civilian population or by moving the civilians to their base of operations.

Given the increase in the deaths of innocent civilians, ISIS will be able to point their fingers at the UK and the other Western States and say that the carnage is the reason that they must continue to fight their Jihad.  It won’t matter that ISIS are the real reason for the civilian casualties because they will ‘spin’ things in such a way that it will reinforce their ideological needs.

With ISIS now having ‘evidence’ of the righteousness of their fight, they will be able to start radicalising young people who are at risk of falling prey to such hate-mongering because of their disaffection with the West.

The process of radicalisation of disaffected youths will help swell the ranks of ISIS and increase the number of terrorists the UK and its allies have to worry about with regards to retaliatory strikes.

Here’s a piece of wisdom for you – when an angry man hits you, hitting him back will only make him even more angry.  ISIS is full of angry people.  Bombing them is just making them angrier and giving them more reason to want to attack those who attack them.

Just sayin’…