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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser.

22 October 2009

I’ve been holding my Saturday Street Stalls in Dover and in Deal for more than twenty years now and I still find them a great way of meeting people and hearing constituent’s concerns.

I get a lot of moans and groans of course but on the whole the people who stop for a chat are friendly and mostly supportive but that’s not to say I don’t hear criticisms of what the Government is doing or what they should be doing.

Last Saturday I was out in Aylesham with my team and the subjects raised on the stall varied from crime and antisocial behaviour to the global credit crunch and our national finances but one gentleman wanted to talk to me about the origins of the European Union. He took me back to 1975 when the country was asked to decide whether the UK should stay in the Common Market and politicians were holding public meetings all over the place.

My stall visitor said that two husting meetings were called in Aylesham High School, the first organised by the Labour Party and the second by the Conservatives and he decided to attend both – in the interests of balance. He had a job to get into Labour gathering because of the crowds but when he turned up to the Tory event he found he was the only member of the audience so the meeting was cancelled.

There’s not quite that level of political polarity in Aylesham today but since that time a Conservative Government closed down their pit and Conservative controlled Kent County Council shut down their High School so they’ve got little to thank the Tories for.

A much younger man came to our stall complaining that the Government wasn’t doing enough to help the unemployed and support businesses so I told him about some of the measures we had taken and some of our plans for the future.

I told him about the additional £5 billion we are investing in Jobcentre Plus to help people back to work and the 200,000 agreements we have been signed off with businesses allowing them more time to pay their tax bills to help keep people in work – many of them here in the South East.

Our visitor had heard about our car scrappage program but he hadn’t heard that over 200,000 orders have already been made through the popular scheme - helping an important part of our industry which employs 180,000 people directly and on which a further 750,000 depend. It provides a good deal for consumers but more importantly it is supporting our manufacturing base. And once the recovery is clearly in place we will commence a three part plan to half our deficit in four years in a way that is fair and responsible.

I’m afraid he wasn’t wholly convinced but he did say he’d vote for us again if the economy is in recovery and he’s still in employment in the new year – I guess a lot of people will be feeing that way.