RECENTLY along with Mark Latham, our excellent Labour candidate, I did a walking tour around Eastleigh town centre, a microscopic picture of how the poor can be ripped off with ease.
The shrewd marketing by Poundland where you can buy a box of around half a dozen Cadburys Milk Tray chocolates for £1, which works out about 17p for one chocolate.
Turn into the High Street, the Echo office is gone, the Wine bar ostensibly being refurbished is really closed, and the Salvation Army charity shop used to be Connections, a venue for our 18-year-olds to get real advice on career prospects.
The food bank in Wells Place where the recipients are seen furtively scurrying away with their carrier bags so that no one notices, the Swan Centre now littered with empty shops and a large empty space which Boswell’s coffee shop has vacated.
Into Market Street, the pawn and pay day loan shop, a few quid to tie them over to the next week when more financial pain increases their already heavy burden.
The defunct nightclub which flourished in the 1980s. Now many youngsters are on zero hour contracts or low pay jobs.
Mark Latham shared my thoughts on this snapshot of life in the heart of Eastleigh – good for some but not for the silent minority, and then we have the Lib Dems’ pleasing peoples’ pledges that mean nothing.
TED WHITE, Eastleigh.
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