• Contact
  • About
  • Authors
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
East Anglia Bylines
  • HOME
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Health
    • Welfare
    • World
    Cycling.

    Thirty for 30 – how to reduce your carbon footprint

    Oven ready social care plan

    AgeUK and ‘People at the heart of care’

    The UK Youth Parliament

    Should sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds be given the vote?

    Shopping for bargains.

    Savvy tips for cutting your food bill

    Templefields House

    ‘Big Bits of Ash Falling from the Sky’: What happens when your home is on an industrial estate and a warehouse fire breaks out?

    Urkrainian refugees at Warsaw Station

    The Homes for Ukraine scheme: really not “world-beating”

    Pirogov-emergency-team

    Norfolk help for the casualties of war

    A group of international students

    After Brexit: another lost opportunity for young people

    Dentist at work

    Emergency! Dental treatment in lockdown

    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    Waiting on the phone.

    The scourge of automated telephone systems

    Pylons at Aldringham, Suffolk

    Shock as National Grid proposes 180km of new pylons across East Anglia

    Houses of Parliament

    Democracy and lack of accountability

    Cambridge Europe Day Fete

    Europe Day fête in Cambridge on 14 May

    Three Steampunks

    Imagining other worlds: steampunk in East Anglia

    Smiling Baby

    Twenty years: a staggering difference in life chances

    Shopping for bargains.

    Savvy tips for cutting your food bill

    Templefields House

    ‘Big Bits of Ash Falling from the Sky’: What happens when your home is on an industrial estate and a warehouse fire breaks out?

    Urkrainian refugees at Warsaw Station

    The Homes for Ukraine scheme: really not “world-beating”

    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • All
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    Waiting on the phone.

    The scourge of automated telephone systems

    Hillman Ave. Jaywick

    40-year inflation high brings misery across the region

    Sugar beet

    As farmers suffer, is government’s sugar sell-out just to keep Tory donors sweet?

    Preston bus station

    Community wealth building

    Stansted Airport

    Are plans for Stansted Airport signs of a changing world?

    Snape

    The Ore and the Alde: smugglers, a merman and the home of seaside chic

    The Studio, Elstree

    Was dirty Russian money washed in a Herts public lavatory?

    Ukraine border boxes

    Freedom Boxes and Freedom Buses

    Sunak's wife claims to be non-domiciled

    Is the Chancellor’s wife really a non-dom?

    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • All
    • Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
    Strumpshaw Fen Norfolk

    Is East Anglia’s ‘Blue Wall’ turning Green?

    Hillman Ave. Jaywick

    40-year inflation high brings misery across the region

    Duncan Baker

    Council leader appeals to MP to clean up politics for good after claimed death threats

    Norfolk County Hall

    EXCLUSIVE: shocking coup by Norfolk’s Tories

    Pylons at Aldringham, Suffolk

    Shock as National Grid proposes 180km of new pylons across East Anglia

    Mr Pecksniff (Social Media)

    Pecksniff’s Diary

    Cambridge Europe Day Fete

    Europe Day fête in Cambridge on 14 May

    Three Steampunks

    Imagining other worlds: steampunk in East Anglia

    Local election results in the East: good news for progressives?

    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Health
    • Welfare
    • World
    Cycling.

    Thirty for 30 – how to reduce your carbon footprint

    Oven ready social care plan

    AgeUK and ‘People at the heart of care’

    The UK Youth Parliament

    Should sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds be given the vote?

    Shopping for bargains.

    Savvy tips for cutting your food bill

    Templefields House

    ‘Big Bits of Ash Falling from the Sky’: What happens when your home is on an industrial estate and a warehouse fire breaks out?

    Urkrainian refugees at Warsaw Station

    The Homes for Ukraine scheme: really not “world-beating”

    Pirogov-emergency-team

    Norfolk help for the casualties of war

    A group of international students

    After Brexit: another lost opportunity for young people

    Dentist at work

    Emergency! Dental treatment in lockdown

    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    Waiting on the phone.

    The scourge of automated telephone systems

    Pylons at Aldringham, Suffolk

    Shock as National Grid proposes 180km of new pylons across East Anglia

    Houses of Parliament

    Democracy and lack of accountability

    Cambridge Europe Day Fete

    Europe Day fête in Cambridge on 14 May

    Three Steampunks

    Imagining other worlds: steampunk in East Anglia

    Smiling Baby

    Twenty years: a staggering difference in life chances

    Shopping for bargains.

    Savvy tips for cutting your food bill

    Templefields House

    ‘Big Bits of Ash Falling from the Sky’: What happens when your home is on an industrial estate and a warehouse fire breaks out?

    Urkrainian refugees at Warsaw Station

    The Homes for Ukraine scheme: really not “world-beating”

    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • All
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    Waiting on the phone.

    The scourge of automated telephone systems

    Hillman Ave. Jaywick

    40-year inflation high brings misery across the region

    Sugar beet

    As farmers suffer, is government’s sugar sell-out just to keep Tory donors sweet?

    Preston bus station

    Community wealth building

    Stansted Airport

    Are plans for Stansted Airport signs of a changing world?

    Snape

    The Ore and the Alde: smugglers, a merman and the home of seaside chic

    The Studio, Elstree

    Was dirty Russian money washed in a Herts public lavatory?

    Ukraine border boxes

    Freedom Boxes and Freedom Buses

    Sunak's wife claims to be non-domiciled

    Is the Chancellor’s wife really a non-dom?

    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • All
    • Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
    Strumpshaw Fen Norfolk

    Is East Anglia’s ‘Blue Wall’ turning Green?

    Hillman Ave. Jaywick

    40-year inflation high brings misery across the region

    Duncan Baker

    Council leader appeals to MP to clean up politics for good after claimed death threats

    Norfolk County Hall

    EXCLUSIVE: shocking coup by Norfolk’s Tories

    Pylons at Aldringham, Suffolk

    Shock as National Grid proposes 180km of new pylons across East Anglia

    Mr Pecksniff (Social Media)

    Pecksniff’s Diary

    Cambridge Europe Day Fete

    Europe Day fête in Cambridge on 14 May

    Three Steampunks

    Imagining other worlds: steampunk in East Anglia

    Local election results in the East: good news for progressives?

    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk
No Result
View All Result
East Anglia Bylines
No Result
View All Result

Letter to Duncan Baker MP

Letter to Duncan Baker, Tory MP for North Norfolk from an angry constituent regarding the Owen Paterson vote.

Jeff WoodbyJeff Wood
November 17, 2021
in Anglia
Duncan Baker

Photo by David Woolfall on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

This is part of a letter sent by an angry constituent to one East Anglian MP. Duncan Baker MP (North Norfolk) was among the 38 Conservative MPs in this region who voted with the government on this issue (though he was not one of the three previously convicted of breaches of the rules, all of whom voted with the government).

We believe that all 38 will have been receiving similar letters, and we publish it as an example of constituents’ views. East Anglia Bylines has, as a founding principle, a commitment to probity in public life, without necessarily sharing the particular views of the author.


Dear Duncan, 

Many thanks for your response and I’m sure everyone sympathises with Tory MPs being led to the top of yet another hill before being left high and dry when public outrage forces the government, overnight, to perform a somersault, leaving those who ill-advisedly supported an outrageous policy to deal with the opprobrium of their constituents and their decent colleagues.

It’s a pity that in your letter you resort to sophistry rather than admit you made an understandable but grave error of judgement. The oldest dictum in politics is that when you find yourself in a hole, it is time to stop digging. No amount of wriggling will disguise the fact that this is a defining moment. Either one is on the side of candour and probity in public office, or one is on the side of sleaze. It has nothing to do with party politics. 

You must have lost track of how many similar U-turns there have been: over the non provision of free school meals during the pandemic, for example. You and many decent MPs for some reason felt compelled to bluster and support an inhumane policy, only to find the ground snatched from under your feet when the policy was reversed in the face of overwhelming public disgust. 

What’s disappointing in your letter is this comment on the present fiasco. You state that the amendment had nothing to do with Mr Paterson’s position, 

Nobody on the planet believes that to be the case. And to repeat a lie doesn’t make it true. Perhaps you need to listen to the life long Tory journalist Nick Robinson’s searing interview of the ministerial apologist on the Today programme yesterday morning. He sets out the moral ground very clearly. Soon after the programme aired, the U-turn was announced. 

We have had a Conservative administration for many years. Had there been any sincere desire to reform the complaints procedure to make it more just, it would long ago have been done. The only reason matters came to a head this particular week was because of Mr Paterson’s very close ties to several cabinet ministers and to the Prime Minister’s wife.  And because Johnson himself panicked, knowing that some of his own decisions are likely soon to come under close parliamentary scrutiny. Enormous sums of public money appear to have found their way into the pockets of his cronies. 

We all know that Boris Johnson has a habit of breaking rules, even the law, if he finds it inconvenient, and of failing to think through the consequences. He seems to believe the country no longer cares about, or is capable of distinguishing between, right and wrong. 

Moral decisions, especially in politics, are always lonely decisions. The individual MP can never escape censure by claiming he was following orders, obeying a three line whip, parroting the party’s face-saving line, or has failed to do his homework properly. 

This was a moral test, and many brave and principled Tory MPs refused to be browbeaten into doing what was clearly conniving with corruption, an attempt to change rules which may yet come to bite Johnson himself. 

No doubt you feel betrayed. So do many of your constituents. 

More in sorrow than in anger! 

Jeff Wood
Holt, Norfolk

Jerome Mayhew
Anglia

Social media savages Broadland MP over sewage

November 6, 2021
tom hunt data breach
Anglia

Tory MP accused of breach of data protection laws

October 20, 2021
Tags: Letters
Previous Post

Why not mentioning the War might be a good idea

Next Post

Pecksniff’s Diary

Jeff Wood

Jeff Wood

Jeff Wood has lived in North Norfolk since 2015. For many years, he was Head of English at a Cambridge sixthform college where he taught adult Creative Writing classes and ran teacher-training workshops.

Related Posts

Strumpshaw Fen Norfolk
Anglia

Is East Anglia’s ‘Blue Wall’ turning Green?

byJenny Rhodes
May 19, 2022
Hillman Ave. Jaywick
Anglia

40-year inflation high brings misery across the region

byStuart Burrell
May 18, 2022
Pylons at Aldringham, Suffolk
Anglia

Shock as National Grid proposes 180km of new pylons across East Anglia

byAnna Damski
May 15, 2022
Mr Pecksniff (Social Media)
Anglia

Pecksniff’s Diary

byEast Anglia Bylines
May 14, 2022
Three Steampunks
Anglia

Imagining other worlds: steampunk in East Anglia

byStephen McNair
May 11, 2022
Next Post
"Missing" poster for Richard Bacon MP

Pecksniff's Diary

Want to support us?

Can you help East Anglia Bylines to grow and become more sustainable with a regular donation, no matter how small?  

DONATE

Sign up to our newsletter

If you would like to receive the East Anglia Bylines regular newsletter, straight talking direct to your inbox, click the button below.

NEWSLETTER

LATEST

Strumpshaw Fen Norfolk

Is East Anglia’s ‘Blue Wall’ turning Green?

May 19, 2022
Waiting on the phone.

The scourge of automated telephone systems

May 18, 2022
Hillman Ave. Jaywick

40-year inflation high brings misery across the region

May 18, 2022
Duncan Baker

Council leader appeals to MP to clean up politics for good after claimed death threats

May 17, 2022

MOST READ

Norfolk County Hall

EXCLUSIVE: shocking coup by Norfolk’s Tories

May 17, 2022
Pylons at Aldringham, Suffolk

Shock as National Grid proposes 180km of new pylons across East Anglia

May 15, 2022
Hillman Ave. Jaywick

40-year inflation high brings misery across the region

May 18, 2022
Strumpshaw Fen Norfolk

Is East Anglia’s ‘Blue Wall’ turning Green?

May 19, 2022

Tags

Activism Brexit Business Cambridgeshire Climate Community Culture Democracy Development Devolution Economics Education Employment Environment Essex Farming Finance Health Humour Hymns International Women's Day Justice Letters Local elections 2022 Local government NHS Norfolk Opinion Pandemic Partygate Party politics Pecksniff Poetry Politics Poverty Property Rivers of East Anglia Science Sewage Sizewell Social care Suffolk Ukraine VAWG Welfare
East Anglia Bylines

East Anglia Bylines is a regional online newspaper that supports citizen journalism. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in East Anglia and beyond.

Learn more about us

No Result
View All Result
  • About us
    • Contact us
    • Bylines Network
    • Complaints
    • Newsletter
    • Privacy Policy
    • Donate
    • Pecksniff’s Diary
  • UK
  • Anglia
  • About us
  • UK
  • Anglia

© 2022 East Anglia Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • News
    • Brexit
    • Health
    • Education
    • World
  • Opinion
  • Politics
    • Local government
    • Justice
    • Activism
  • Climate
    • Environment
  • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Culture
    • History
    • Humour
    • Property
  • Business
    • Economics
    • Finance
    • Transport
    • Farming
  • ANGLIA
    • East Anglia
    • Bedfordshire
    • Cambridgeshire
    • Essex
    • Hertfordshire
    • Norfolk
    • Suffolk

© 2022 East Anglia Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In