Hello Welcome to My North Tyneside Community Independents
ABOUT MUSTAQUE
MUSTAQUE RAHMAN
I was born in Whitley Bay.
My father, Maklisur Rahman, left Bangladesh and arrived in the UK in 1962. He worked in the Sheffield steel factories for a living. He used to earn £3 a week. He spent £1 and saved £2, until he was able to save up enough, doing other jobs in addition, to secure a loan in 1967, and opened his first Indian restaurant, Kismet, in Whitley Bay.
The flat above the restaurant was my first home.
When I was old enough for school, mum walked me and my siblings to Rockliffe School every day, then Marden Bridge.
My childhood, growing up in Whitley Bay, was truly blessed.
I went to North Tyneside college and to Kings School in Tynemouth for 6th form.
After graduating from Northumbria University to practice Law, I became a civil servant, first as a legal adviser to the Magistrates then as a senior Crown Prosecutor for the CPS, working in North Tyneside, Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle.
My father was exceptionally intelligent, very hard working, loving, caring and honest. He was an extremely successful entrepreneur, creating businesses across North Tyneside, Jesmond, South Shields and Newcastle, employing 100s of people at times at his various businesses, not including supply chains. Everyone he employed, were paid well enough to move on and establish their own successful businesses across the north east. Many of the businesses he established in the 70s and 80s, are still trading.
He helped charities and supported causes important to the community, both here and in Bangladesh.
I believe my sense of fairness, morality and ethical standards were influenced by him, which I believe was the reason I chose to serve my community in the civil service, as opposed to seeking employment in the commercial sector.
This allowed me to remain engaged with our family businesses locally and stay connected with the local business community.
I have witnessed the demise of the successful, thriving business community of Whitley Bay, over the last 25 years. Successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, have introduced laws and policies, majority of which have been extremely harmful for local businesses.
The pressures they currently face, where the majority of staff are young, have very little left after the overheads they have to pay, eg. wages/gas/electricity/rates etc, which have caused numerous businesses to close forever, and the ones still open are struggling.
Our democratically elected government, is more supportive of multinational companies' needs and billionaire donors, many of whom contribute to both parties. Lobbyists paid for by those businesses and other countries even, are influencing them, which appears to be normal for our parliamentarians.
That is utterly undemocratic.
I believe in democracy and want our political parties to be democratic.
Our MP for the last 27 years has been Alan
Campbell.
He's currently the chief whip.
It is blatantly clear, he is not democratic, despite what he claims, because Labour are parachuting in candidates, with Alan Campbell's absolute agreement and complicity, into what the party considers 'safe Labour seats', in Sunderland and Durham, including many other areas around the country.
The party has silenced and removed pro-democracy candidates, who have dared to put the needs of the local people first before party, such as Jeremy Corbyn, Faiza Shaheen, our very own Jamie Driscoll, Cath Davies, Maureen Madden. The list goes on.
All they were guilty of, was supporting local issues, reflecting what people in our area wanted them to stand up for. They were silenced because the Labour party is no longer standing up for people or workers, but big money corporations, supported by the main stream media, most of which is owned by big multi national companies and billionaires.
I was a member of the Labour party, but we were denied to select our own candidates for Mayor, Police Commissioner and councillors, by the party leaders, a policy which Alan Campbell is instrumental in.
That is not democracy nor democratic.
It's no surprise folks don't believe what politicians say, because their actions prove otherwise.
So, we have to stand up.
We have to stand up and say we're not taking this anymore. We will assert our rights. I'll be spending majority of my time in the constituency, listening to you and trying everything possible to help my community. All the work I do on behalf of the community, will be transparent. The problems within our political class, the corrupt nature of our politics, will become apparent very quickly. once
I will make public my correspondence with other law makers, so when they refuse or obfuscate to support policies that you have demanded, or those that will fundamentally help with the cost of living crisis, healthcare, education, child welfare, crime and disorder - you will understand the corruption within our political system, and hopefully those affected constituencies can take action for better representation.
That's why I'm standing as an independent candidate for the people of Tynemouth.
Our country has become more divided than ever, there are more people living in desperate poverty, there are more people using food banks and more families wondering how they can make ends meet.
Young people can't get anywhere to live, people with children living in overcrowded places, people in the private rented sector facing high rents and insecurity, 2 parents working but having to rely on food banks to feed their family!
The situation is unacceptable.
This won't end without fundamental change, redistribution of power and wealth, public ownership of water, Royal Mail, energy companies etc.
Many other western countries manage to control rent and control the private renters sector, so can we.
A health service that isn't the plaything of global corporations, to quote Jeremy Corbyn, trying to take over our NHS.
These fundamental demands are not being presented by this Labour Party, the official opposition, when these are the demands of millions of people around the country.
Since Alan Campbell became MP in 1997, while in Government, he supported the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and our country suffered the worst economic crash in modern history.
Whilst he has been in opposition, the Conservatives introduced measures of austerity, which have since been exposed as unnecessary and deemed cruel by the UN, yet he and the Labour Party, as the main opposition, were unable to do anything to help people.
Labour have already said they will not increase taxes on the billionaires and the multinational corporations, instead they will tax private schools or withdraw their relief on VAT. How is that likely to adequately fund our crumbling infrastructure??
They have refused to state they will recover the billions wasted on PPE to friends of Tories. They continue to include Tony Blair, who is a war criminal, in their inner circle discussions, whose foundation receives 10s of millions from a billionaire in private healthcare, who owns Oracle, which provide the software for NHS trusts.
The laughable online safety act, will do very little to protect us and our children, from fake news, deep fakes, bullying, fraud or worse, because the Labour party are now in with the tech giants, providing them with immunity effectively, claiming it's progress, all the while, ignoring the extremely serious harm they cause our children and society.
Conservatives were the government for almost 2 decades before 1997. People became sick of Tories, so we voted Labour. 13 years of Labour as Government, the majority of the country was sick of them, so they voted Conservative. 14 years of Tories in Government, majority will now vote Labour!
We can't keep doing this. We need fundamental change in our politics.
We vote for a member of parliament. That's all.
We have had to endure Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, because the majority of electors voted for Boris and/or Brexit in 2019. Both of which have now been proven to be bad for our people and country.
Everything Alan Campbell stated he stands for in 2019, like Kier Starmer, have all been abandoned.
How can we trust anything he says.
The party is silencing and rejecting pro democracy candidates, those who show support for Palestine, while inviting life long Tory MPs into the Party.
Labour have effectively abandoned trade unions, while openly advocating for tax relief on big businesses.
We need a politics that represents an alternative to the horrible, corrupt, arid years of this Tory government. Whoever the Prime Minister is, and it's looking more and more likely to be Starmer, I'll be holding him to account on child poverty, holding him to account on hunger, on health, on jobs, on the environment, on global issues of peace and justice.
That's what an MP should do and that is what I will do.
I hope that those of you who have supported labour and are still a member of the party, those who have voted Conservative in the past, those who have chosen to not vote because you believe all politicians are the same, please understand, I'm here to represent all of you, not just those who are loyal to a party.
I will stick to the policies, to the issues and to our fundamental humanity.
I promise to fight for fairness in our society, for peace, for justice, and for democracy.
