It’s all very good for UKIP’s parliamentary candidate to finally turn up seeking to make political capital out of local patients’ recent experiences of winter pressures at our NHS hospitals (Health News 7/1/2015).
However, as he had never been seen in South Holland before a fortnight ago (!) and seldom ventures out from his Leicester home, how can he really grasp what’s going on – seemingly exploiting other peoples’ anxiety for his own political ends?
Mr Parsons can’t know, because he isn’t using local NHS doctors, dentists and hospitals.
It seems that Mr Parsons has been in politics for a very long time; he’s been a Labour councillor, a Conservative councillor, an independent councillor and has now joined UKIP.
He stood down from being UKIP’s candidate in North West Leicestershire for reasons that are unclear (although, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that it was related to the well-known scandal of his expenses and the public outrage about it in his home area).
How do we know that he won’t do the same here under the full glare of public scrutiny?
If he’s not good enough to be a candidate in the place he lives, why should we take him seriously here?
Andrew Livsey
via email
