I WORRY you will get bored with hearing about this kind of thing before too long. But sad to say, after my last column here about the delays to trains on the Furness Line, I have even more stories to tell you about how this government really doesn’t care about what happens in the North of the country and in particular in Cumbria.

I’ll give you one example, as you may have read in the news the other day, the grant that the government pays to Cumbria County Council for public health is under a third the level per head of what it pays to Westminster Council. In fact Cumbria receives the 12th lowest amount per head of any council in England.

Public health funding is really important, it pays for health schemes like smoking prevention and drug treatments. Is the government so out of touch that it thinks we don’t have problems with obesity, smoking and drugs here or is it that the people facing these issues simply don’t need as much care as people living in the middle of London? Either way it is sadly out of touch.

One of my biggest concerns with this issue is that this is the money that pays for health visitors and school nurses. Speak to any headteacher about the support they get when they find children with health issues in their schools and most of them, or at least most of the ones I speak to, simply shake their heads and look exasperated.

Some figures I saw the other day said that on average three children in every classroom are suffering from some diagnosable mental health problem. Without proper funding who is going to look after them?

Sadly it doesn’t stop there. Two years ago the government allocated £25m to improve our flood defences along the River Kent and as of today I am not aware of anything happening at all. I have written to Michael Gove to ask him to get his finger out, we are coming into winter when the rains have historically been greatest and we should expect to be protected.

The last example I want to give you was the speech given at the Conservative Party conference by Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the exchequer. In it he spoke about investing £400m in transport in the North of England. That’s quite a lot of money (but much, much less than the £30bn currently planned for Crossrail 2 in London) but was there any mention of some of this money coming to Cumbria? Don’t bother reading through the speech, I’ve already done it for you and can tell you the answer is no. In fact, as I have mentioned here before, all the government is doing to us is taking investment away by cancelling the electrification of the Lakes Line.

That’s just the stories over two weeks. I can see my fight over the coming months will be just to ensure we get our fair share of any money going. Let alone get any more.