Cllr Mick Danvers Rants - I Respond

I see in this weeks Harlow Herald, Cllr Mick Danvers is ranting at me and trying to mislead the public over the Church Langley Monies. I have submitted the following letter to the Editor of the paper for publication next week in response to Cllr Danvers.


Sir - When is Councillor Mick Danvers going to start being straight with the public?

Last week's letter "Profit from Cuts" was little more than an amateur distortion of facts from a man who comes across as being so bitter that he is still in opposition.

I have no problem with Cllr Danvers attacking my or my party's policies - that's normal healthy political debate, but spin and half truths and even untruths are surely not becoming of him or the Labour party.

The underspend, and not "profit" as Cllr Danvers suggests, came about from a number of windfalls at the end of the year. Cllr Danvers and his Labour colleagues may have tried to set budgets in the past gambling that such windfalls would arrive, but this Conservative administration doesn't feel its appropriate to play poker or roulette with the town's finances.

And as Cllr Danvers well knows, the Church Langley money was never the Councils'. It belongs to the developers of Church Langley and was entrusted for "safekeeping" with the Council. But that trust was betrayed in 2007 and again in 2008 by the Labour/Lib Dem cabal running the town who dipped their hands in again and again to prop up their own overspend. Had they not made a vague promise to repay at some unspecified later date some might even suggest the money had been misappropriated.

One of the first pledges I made when I became Leader of the Council was that Church Langley's money would be repaid in five years. Because of the windfalls we have had we are actually able to repay the money three years early. However, instead of celebrating the fact that we have cleaned up their financial mess, Cllr Danvers and the Labour group continue to look with greedy eyes on money that isn't even properly the Council's to spend.

The worst thing about Cllr Mick Danvers rant is that he honestly believes there were never any financial problems in Harlow and still doesn't believe there are financial problems nationally. What world does this Councillor live in? Certainly not the new progressive Britain that is having to pull up its shirt sleeves to sort out thirteen years of Labour incompetence both here in Harlow and across all of the United Kingdom.

Sincerely,
Councillor Andrew Johnson,
Leader of Harlow Council

Cllr Danvers is a socialist of the old order and delights in his mischievous letters to the press each week. I fully accept that debates about policy are not only appropriate but welcome in the press but the kind of rubbish that Mick is peddling needs to be scotched immediately.