DUP lookedthe other wayas Lisburnlost out

IT is quite amazing how people who claim to have no connection with the council or its chairmen claim to know so much about council finances ten years ago, although they omit the fact that since 2005 there has been an annual increase in council spend of £1 million each year.
By The Newsroom
Published 19th Apr 2011, 08:37 BST

They think that the prime facilities they enjoy regularly should have come about without cost, yet the UUP upgraded the city whilst at the same time keeping the Council in the lowest quarter of the rates league table. Which of these facilities would they have not have built? Would they have denied the people the use of the marvellous Civic Centre? The widely acclaimed Leisureplex? The Linen Centre or the beautifully restored Castle Gardens?

The theme of your correspondents’ letters mimics that of the DUP themselves. DUP good. UUP bad. Even though the DUP inherited a city centre in 2005 with very few vacant shops, after six years it is apparently the UUP which is to blame for the sorry state it is in now.

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We have DUP candidates loftily condemning those whom they allege are talking Lisburn down, when they cower in silence unable to condemn their own colleagues who have put Lisburn down by denying us the investment and facilities we are entitled to.

There is not a whisper of condemnation for their Planning Minister who, by giving Tesco the go-ahead for their superstore at Banbridge, will at a stroke remove virtually all the southern traffic using Sprucefield whose status as a Regional Shopping Centre has now been called into question by the DRD Minister Connor Murphy.

Ald. Dillon and I recently attended a meeting on the review of that Strategy and strongly condemned such a proposal and were told by a senior representative of the DRD that Belfast City Centre must be protected. Not one of our DUP councillors felt sufficiently concerned to attend.

I called a meeting with senior Planning officials on Monday to discuss the delays in the John Lewis application. Again the DUP failed to send a representative.

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The rates issue itself is actually a drop in a bucket compared to the loss of the £6.5 million on the botched sale of Ballymacoss Hill and the tens of millions of lost revenue on Lisburn projects hugely delayed or abandoned by DUP ministers.

That is why your DUP-supporting correspondents are becoming increasingly frenetic. Many voters know that a vote for the DUP would be an endorsement of the manner in which our city has been financially pillaged, whilst those whom they elected to be their watch dogs, forbidden to bark, looked the other way and blamed it all on the UUP.

Ronnie Crawford

Related topics:DUPUUPCouncilLisburn