Another Letter Another Rejection

As Hatfield Girl noticed, the Sussex Express ran a headline this week in which a local artists claimed that poncy Londoners were destroying the Town`s identity. I deliberately misunderstood him, slightly and wrote in as below. He said he would not take a commission to paint someone`s cat as it would compromise his integrity by the way, which crops up.This is largely old ground so do feel free to move along .

"The Newman(ia) family arrived, just in time to see the fireworks, so I assume we are amongst those accused of rotting the town’s fabric by Peter Messer. For us that would entirely defeat the point of coming here from London.

When I used to walk to the Tube in Islington, I passed five recent murder sites and the “radical” Finsbury Park Mosque, where a cache of arms was found . Crime was unrelenting ,no one met your eye, and the fear of a knives and guns was omnipresent . The nearby Andover estate was featured on television as an exemplar of a social wasteland .Across Islington 50% were in social housing 70% of whom claimed benefits with results that could fill a year’s Daily Mail editorials.

In many Boroughs of London over 50 % of the school children speak English, at best, as a second language, and in some, like Tower Hamlets, the proportion is 75%. The rate of change is such, that births to mothers born outside the UK are up to 74% in the Borough of Newham, with ten Boroughs above 50%.

There was no community, for all the disingenuous Liberal Council blithered on about it. There were rich people who sent their children to private school ,and welfare dependents whose children attended ‘pre - prison‘. Low to middling folk, who need to use state education, had no choice but to leave. Misguided welfare and housing policies were part of the problem. Deluded multiculturalism ,supported by people whose kids would not attend schools failing to cope with eight languages, was another .

So, I suspect we value the social coherence and continuity of Lewes as much as anyone and the first thing I did was to join the local Conservative party who I see as defending exactly that.
I would like to stress that new people and change at a sustainable rate, are to be welcomed as we have been here. Without immigration there would be no Newman family ,we are mixed race, and who knows , perhaps Mr. Messer may end up taking commissions, after all ,we have two lovely cats …."