Tim Cotterill 🔸

UK Businessman. Chairman of James Lister & Sons supplying West Midlands manufacturers since 1874. Liberal Democrat. All Views My Own.

[Waqas🔶️ @m0w4q45]

The whole country seems to have had an opinion on Middlesbrough this week. Most of it from people who have never set foot here.

So let me tell you about the Teesside I actually know.

I’m an adopted Teessider. I live in Stockton. I run a care company and an accessible taxi firm across the Tees Valley, and I was the parliamentary candidate for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East. I see this place at six in the morning and at midnight. I see the people behind the headlines.

Some of the people I care for still receive pensions from ICI. That’s how recent our industrial past is. This was a place that made things. A place that powered Britain. At its peak, ICI employed around 25,000 people at Wilton alone. Then the steelworks closed in 2015 and thousands more livelihoods disappeared with it.

And for four decades, government after government failed to answer the most basic question: what comes next?

That is the part the pile-on misses.

Half of Middlesbrough’s neighbourhoods are now among the most deprived 10% in England the highest proportion of any council area in the country. That did not happen because Teessiders suddenly became bad people.

It happened because industries disappeared, communities lost secure work, too few people were retrained, and generations were too often parked on benefits and handed slogans instead of opportunity.

Then we wonder why things went wrong.

Middlesbrough Council has had to go cap in hand to government just to keep basic services running. Redcar and Cleveland has faced the same pressures. Hartlepool is burning through its reserves.

Three councils are being asked to repair the damage of forty years of economic decline with one hand tied behind their backs.

And yes, there is crime. Cleveland has one of the highest recorded crime rates in England and Wales. I won’t pretend otherwise. I believe criminals should be caught, punished and, where necessary, locked up. I will always back the police in doing that job.

But a town of 140,000 people is not defined by the minority who wreck things.

It is defined by the care worker finishing a double shift.

By the apprentice learning a trade on land where the steelworks once stood.

By the small business owner opening the shutters every morning and refusing to give up.

By families on estates who might not have much, but would still give you their last quid if you needed it.

That is the Middlesbrough I know.

Slagging Boro off is easy. Turning poverty into a punchline is easy. What is harder is asking why successive governments allowed one of Britain’s great industrial areas to decline and then blamed the people left behind for the consequences.

So here is my challenge to everyone in Westminster who has discovered an opinion on Middlesbrough this week:

Come here.

Bring serious investment. Bring skilled jobs. Bring industry back to the Tees Valley. Give our councils the resources to rebuild communities rather than simply manage decline.

Then come back in ten years and tell me what you think of Middlesbrough.

Because this place does not need your pity.

It needs a fair chance.

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@SJRichmond89 @codybutleruk @Prosper_UK_ @LaylaMoran I believe in debating face to face ? Twitter is not the best medium to convey complex issues …

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@SJRichmond89 @codybutleruk @Prosper_UK_ Like @LaylaMoran . I don’t really believe in centre right or centre left… A Big Centre … Pragmatic , common sensual, wealth generating and caring politics ….

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@SJRichmond89 @codybutleruk @Prosper_UK_ Let’s debate @SJRichmond89 . Are you at conference ?

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@codybutleruk @SJRichmond89 More in Common research commissioned by @Prosper_UK_ claimed/found there are 7 million voters at least in this “space” … I am inclined to believe this .

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@MartinC45513529 @NicholasTyrone Andrew Griffiths spoke twice at MakeUk conferences …. Went down like a lead balloon….

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@BenjaminOCall Grand Coalition of The Sensible 🤔

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@codybutleruk btw…. I am a pragmatic business focused liberal …. Definitely not a “leftie”

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@codybutleruk Very true . I do agree with @LaylaMoran . Have you any thoughts on whether @Prosper_UK_ will prosper with current Tory leadership?

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@MFishwreck @NicholasTyrone Badenoch is not listening…. Orange Bookers Liberals and ProsperUK unite under LibDems for country’s sake.

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@MFishwreck @NicholasTyrone So correct here. Bring back the Orange Bookers . I believe Ed Davey wrote an essay on centre with a tinge of right Liberals. It’s the right space to be in . So many liberal business people feeling politically homeless at present. ProsperUk are trying to fill this space.

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@Tzenh He should be in a prison..

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@jjsalmo @DavidHenigUK @Suewilson91 Yes . UK cut out of some integrated supply chains…. Talking to a guy from Trinity College Dublin. They seemed to be quite happy to receive more EU students who hitherto would have gone to UK universities….

[David Henig 🇺🇦 @DavidHenigUK]

Interesting framing. Not possible for current UK-EU negotiations to "fix things in an amicable way that will add percentage points to our growth". That could only be done by the UK changing its red lines, which the government has ruled out. https://t.co/4oh53i4wk6

[David Henig 🇺🇦 @DavidHenigUK]

UK political right still running with the fantasy that their plans whether with regard to ECHR or GDPR won't affect EU trade ties, when actually they'd land us straight back into the crisis zones of the past. And media failing to mention that. https://t.co/Mwz3Z5Dyr7

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@StuartBudd1 @euromove British exceptionalism lives on.... unfortunately

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@LizWebsterSBF @andyburnham Mrs May thought the same when she called a GE in 2017.....
But Burnham needs a mandate so it would be the right call..

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@StuartBudd1 @HFalconerMP I am being a bit defeatist.... But even rejoining the EU SM and a UK/EU CU is too late now. EU customers and suppliers have cut UK companies out of supply chains . Can we offer something in the pan Euro Defence supply chains ? Not sure....

[Tim Cotterill 🔸 @tim_cotterill]

@DavidHenigUK "speculative policy ideas"