Fury at hike in swimming charges (From Salisbury Journal)

Perhaps its time to try wild swimming! At Farleigh and District Swimming Club, family's can enjoy wild swimming at a fraction of the costs. Membership is compulsory but it costs just £10.00 for adults and £5.00 for children. Less than the cost of a leisure pass in Salisbury!
http://www.stowfordm
anorfarm.co.uk/swimm
ing.php
http://hungouttodry.
co.uk

I think it is outrageous they are charging so much. I would text the poll line, but I am not going to pay the 50p + to do so. For us as a family of 5 it would cost £24.15, however if we were to drive to Romsey Rapids, it would cost just £16.80 and that is for a lot more facilities. The price of swimming needs to go back to what it was, or even better, be free again.

Public swimming pools were built so that our children did not drown or catch disease in the rivers.

My daughter with my five year old grandaughter had to pay £9.85 for what was the use of the pool for an hour.

As the article said, in October it was free swimming for children and old Grampies.

This is where current Conservative policies hit the weakest and vulnerable most.
Fewer youngsters will go to the pool, their parents will not be able to afford it. Older ones will hang around on the streets, possibly getting into trouble and putting the police under pressure. Younger ones will stay indoors playing with their electronic games, getting fatter, instead of fitter.

We have a Conservative MP who supports the Conservative led Government who have made cut backs that affect the most vulnerable and a Conservative County Council who fix the fees for this the most social form of exercise for children.

Please don't reply about comments about a deficit. My five year old had nothing to do with antics of the British bankers in the USA who the Conservatives backed to the hilt until it all went wrong. She should not be penalised.

Same old Tories, make the poor pay, give tax breaks to the rich (Prediction-Income tax will be reduced just before the next election which will not benefit those who don't pay income tax)

Once again people will be going elsewhere to find their leisure facilities, EG shopping and sports activities.

One article said that people are not spending their money in Salisbury any more, and prefer Bournemouth or Basingstoke. Soon it will be the same for leisure centre's.

One day when Salisbury is a ghost town, I'll tell my grandchildren how Salisbury just died. How the city used to be thriving, now the streets are just empty and quiet.

There is nothing for children to do. Not much of a night-life, unless your into pubs and nightclubs. All seems to be centred round the cathedral and close.

@Grampie
Thanks to the Conservative led government a lot of the poorest have been lifted out of income tax altogether because the government has already reduced income tax for those at the bottom. Labour have done nothing to help the poorest, they looked the other way for a decade whilst the bankers lined their own pockets leaving us mere mortals to pick up the bill. Thanks to Labour’s mismanagement your five year old already owes £23,000, we all do. It is disgusting. I will make a comment about a deficit… it is there, it is real, it threatens this country with bankruptcy. I do not like everything the government is doing but I respect it for having the balls to make the impossible decisions required to deal with our financial crisis that Labour continues to shirk away from.

Hello Andrea.

Stick with this, it is a bit long winded.

I think there are some things you are not aware of regarding the nation’s finances.
What you omitted to say was the Conservatives in opposition wanted the Labour Government to relax the rules governing banking. Cameron said he was going to continue to spend as much on the economy as labour until the WORLD WIDE financial crisis hit the world.
The conservatives wanted to let bankrupt banks go to the wall. If the labour Government had done that, millions of people would have lost their savings and thousands of small businesses would have gone to the wall, that is why they had to bail them out, that is why we have such a large deficit.

We had our manufacturing industry decline because of globalisation and we were left with the financial industries as our main source of income.

The rules regulating the financial industry were relaxed by those old socialists, a Mrs M Thatcher, together with Mr R Reagan.

The labour government was wrong not to tighten up the banking rules, but you can bet your life that the Conservatives would have howled like mad if they did.
The previous Labour government recognised there was a problem and had already taken steps to reduce public spending, much of which came into being in the beginning of last year. In addition, their plan was to cut spending at a much slower rate than these Conservatives are doing. That is prudent.

As for your comments about what has the labour party done for poor people, How about the following old chestnuts:
Set up the NHS (The Conservatives hated that and still do)
The Welfare state (Atlee’s Government in 1945) Child benefit etc.
Winter fuel allowances for pensioners (The Conservatives have cut my winter fuel allowance, whilst I can afford it, there are many who can’t)

The minimum wage (The Conservatives always opposed that

Free bus passes for pensioners (The Conservatives always opposed that)

Free swimming passes for children and older people (The Conservatives took that away

Child credit-(The Conservatives have taken £40 a month away from my hard working, tax-paying daughter

The Conservatives put up VAT to 20% which every non tax-paying person (Poor people usually) has to pay if they wish to buy things.

When the last labour Government were in power:

A million pensioners were lifted out of poverty

600,000 children were lifted out of relative poverty

It was the Conservative governments who threw away the North Sea Oil profits by cutting income tax for the rich and they let schools, hospitals, social housing and other public buildings rot.

It was on improving the lot of those less advantaged that the Labour Government did, because they had to due to the neglect of the previous Conservative Governments.

It was the Labour governments who re-built schools and hospitals, not Conservatives.

The Conservative loving banking industry got their noses in the troughs through the PFI initiatives, one such company with an office in Jersey, I believe, made £30 million last year for lending on PFI and only paid £100,000 in tax. One of the big mistakes the Labour party fell for.
Incidentally PFI was first used by the Conservative government led by John Major.

Why should Conservatives worry about the poor when they can send their money abroad as tax avoidance?

With regard to your comment about my grandchildren owing £23,000 you have swallowed the line that the credit card if overdrawn. On a grand scale of things, this debt is manageable (I don’t know too much about this, but I understand that most of the debt is to financial institutions in this country).
Our situation is different to those of Ireland ( an article by the then shadow chancellor George Osborne written in 2006 is interesting http://www.timesonli
ne.co.uk/tol/comment
/columnists/guest_co
ntributors/article73
3821.ece copy and cut and put in your browser ) as is the situation in Greece and Portugal.

Many of the cuts and the re-organisation of the NHS are politically driven by the Conservatives.

I hope that as a result of those cuts, you are not made redundant or your children are unemployed or your grandmother suffers because she feels cannot afford the price of heating because the price has gone up and the Conservative Government has cut her winter fuel payments.

A few years ago I was talking to a gardener/handyman who worked for a wealthy, but retired businessman from the tobacco trade. The gardener told me that he was working in his employers garden, when the boss came out and told him with a smile on his face “The Conservative Chancellor has raised the personal allowance so you will be better off” The gardener told him “You don’t pay enough for me to pay tax now”. That was how much the rich employer knew about his employee.

I am afraid the Conservatives don’t do or care much about the poor. They never mention what they would do about poverty. Now that is disgusting.

Yours, Ian