Marcus Wood

Summing up Labour in a single phrase.

"The state would be the ultimate authority in allocating resources to the population" - this is a direct quote from my opposite number David Pedrick Friend in todays local paper. He claims this is what his Labour Party stands for.

It says in elegant simplicity what Labour represent, the view that 'the population' are to be the passive recipients of resources from the all-powerful state; that we are all here as mere cogs in the mighty state machine.

It's everything I went into politics to oppose.

In my view the state should be there to serve it's citizens, not the other way round as envisaged by Mr Pedrick Friend.

Gordon Brown went to elaborate lengths yesterday via the Queens Speech to create a political divide, to draw the battle lines for the next election with a plethora of meaningless bills.

But his local representative has summed it up far more elegantly, and truthfully.

He also said "Labour's 1945 government signed a contract with the British people that for the first time in British history the era of the rich man in his castle and poor man at his gate would end."

But under this Labour Government the gap between rich and poor has grown, the number of jobless has risen, the opportunities for young people fallen, and the burden of debt tripled.

Socialism serves only to impoverish everyone.