● Photo by Marc Hodgson
Free Online at www.coastalviewandmoornews.co.uk The Community Newspaper for the Towns and Villages of East Cleveland, Redcar & North York Moors, telling the real news and views of the people of our region
•• This month 26,300 copies ••
Issue 79 May - June 2017
My time as a Member of Parliament Thanks to my office, problems big and small have been solved and hundreds of people have been represented at disability benefit tribunal with a very high rate of success.
W
I’d like to take one final opportunity to thank everyone who got me here. Seven years is a long time, especially in politics, it’s has been hard work but I have loved nearly every minute of it.
Editor's note
hen we first started our Coastal View journey, at the same time a young Tom Blenkinsop started a journey of his own too when he was elected as MP for Middlesbrough South & East Cleveland; in fact our first front page article was an interview with Tom, after we met him for the first time. That front page headline said "Fiercely proud to represent this beautiful area." One of the questions we asked him was what he was going to do as MP, to which he replied: "Basically I’m fighting as hard as I can for the big issues affecting our area and if people want to raise anything with me, my door is always open, because what I see myself as, is the mechanism for people to get their voice heard in Westminster." We believe Tom always tried to do this and we always found him to be approachable, friendly and constantly fighting for what he believed in and that was the area he was proud to represent. We will miss him and we know the many people he and his staff helped over the last seven years will miss him too. We wish him well in whatever path he chooses in the future.
● Tom speaking in the Chamber
I
By Tom Blenkinsop
never thought that I would have the honour of being the Member of Parliament for my hometown, but the sad and sudden death of my friend and predecessor Ashok Kumar just a few short weeks before the 2010 general election gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. Even though I am not standing for re-election I will be fighting to get the best possible result for Labour. I’ll be campaigning across our area and beyond to return Labour MPs to parliament. In particular I will be fighting for labour to retain Anna Turley as their MP who has represented the area so well. I have a lot of fond memories from my time as an MP. In Parliament, I have done my best to get improvements for the constituency and make changes in the law but this is incredibly difficult if you are in opposition. However, I managed to get the government to extend the remit of the coal authority I include some abandoned ironstone mines which paved the way for the work to clear Saltburn gill after it was contaminated and turned orange. I also got a small section of the bedroom tax overturned; I noticed that armed forces families would be hit by the bedroom tax if they lived in social housing and were put on active duty. It is wrong that anyone who is putting their life on the line to defend our country should leave their loved ones with this burden so I raised it with the
Inside:
Coastal View Issue 1 armed forces minister in a debate on the military covenant, I went on to raise the issue in a meeting with the Secretary of State for defence and the then leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband even raised the case in Prime Ministers questions. A few weeks after this the government quietly dropped the bedroom tax for armed forces on active duty. Sadly, the steel industry has been in crisis during my time in Westminster; when I was first elected Tata had just mothballed the blast furnace at Redcar. As a newly elected MP I joined a delegation to Thailand to talk to SSI who were interested in buying the plant, which they did. But that good news was short lived and in 2015 the blast furnace went out and the history of iron making on Teesside was brought to an end. I joined others in desperate talks to try and save the plant but the government’s unwillingness to tackle large amounts of cheap Chinese steel flooding the European market has been a major setback to the industry and our area.
8 page Spring NCS Times