Senior Thanet Labour councillor and former Mayor of Broadstairs and St Peters, Kristian “Not-So” Bright, has shamefully mocked and insulted the district’s 26,000 pensioners by posting on social media that his parents will make up for the Labour Government’s axing of their £200 winter fuel allowance by taking an extra winter cruise to keep warm.
A Thanet Labour Party insider has told me the after being made aware of Bright’s offensive post, he was ordered by Party bosses to delete it from Facebook and make a public apology for any offence he may have caused to Thanet’s pensioners.
Instead, after removing the post as instructed, Bright doubled
down on his insulting behavior by republishing the offending words and excusing them by saying that the original post was meant to be “mischievous”, and then feebly justifying Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to remove the winter fuel allowance for more than 10 million pensioners.
Nowhere in his new post is there an apology to the district’s pensioners for his initial highly offensive post, and its repetition indicates that Bright is not remorseful for his pathetic schoolboy effort to be “mischievous”.
As an elected Thanet councillor whose ward includes several thousand pensioners Bright should have known that the decision to axe the winter fuel allowance was not in the least bit funny, or as he ignorantly claims, a straightforward question of those who need and those who don’t need the payment.
As Age UK and other organisations working with older people have made clear at least two million pensioners who receive slightly more than the weekly £218 per week pension credit limit will, because of the cliff-edge cut off, be excluded from the winter fuel payment and made poorer and be placed at greater risk by its removal. This will have a very serious impact upon pensioners who because of poor health need to keep warm during the winter, or who live in homes that desperately need insulation.
Many campaign groups are now comparing Labour’s limitation of winter fuel payments to the Tory’s cap on benefits for families with more than 2 children and arguing that these measures significantly increase poverty and focus upon depriving already vulnerable people.
For an elected Labour councillor who is supposed to be representing poor and vulnerable constituents to cruelly mock and insult them in what he calls a “mischievous” social media post and to then fail to apologise for the harm he caused, is beyond contempt.
Cllr Kristian “Not-So” Bright is a disgrace. He appears to think that insulting vulnerable voters is a fun and mischievous thing to do, which indicates the low esteem in which he holds the residents of Thanet.
There is no place in politics, whether local or national, for a person like Bright and he should do the right thing and resign with immediate effect. If not Labour should expel this nasty piece of work from the Party as quickly as possible.
I asked Cllr “Not-So” Bright for comments he did not respond. You can contact him to express your views about his insulting post on -
That Parking Czar wants bringing before the Standards Board making comments like that taking the P.. Out of struggling Senior Citizens