‘Todmorden Together No Longer’: This was the headline splashed across the front page of this week's Todmorden News & Advertiser, referring to the long awaited closure of the Todmorden Together [TG], the pet  ‘voluntary group’ of choice for many of our local great-and-not-so-good.  'Todmorden Together' was created as part of a funding drive by Tony Blair to create thousands of new local quangos and other assorted third-sector organizations across the country, serving to disguise the coming financial crisis and an attempt to put a positive spin on the ghastly planning agendas of many of the local councils.

Since then the group has attracted funding from sources as diverse as the National Lottery, the ‘Community Foundation for Calderdale’, Calderdale Council, Todmorden Town Council and even Sport Relief! - Yes that’s right; if your kids did the sponsored run for Sport Relief then you were helping to line the pockets of Todmorden Together!  TG were mainly dormant until one Louise Castro became its lead (paid) worker.  Ms Castro was formerly a failed candidate for the ‘Red & Green Alliance’ (an extreme globalist neo-Marxist party) in Hebden Bridge in the 2004 Local Council elections and despite never being a Todmorden resident, has since dug herself into the bosom of our rotten political establishment.

In their normal sycophantic style, the Todmorden News regularly paid homage to the many events TG held in the Town Hall in an attempt to justify their existence (mostly glorifying foreign cultures, including a regular Muslim Eid-Fest) which is not surprising really, considering the Todmorden News has filled many column-inches with their ‘Eid-Fests’, and so on, the suffix ‘Fest’ being their stamp on these events – which the Todmorden News lovingly embraced as being part of the Town Calendar!

Such events virtually guaranteed the support of publicity-hungry local Town Councillors of all stripes who would be rewarded with quotes plastered in the local paper complementing the latest TG event, or even a photo if they were lucky.  However, it wasn’t just the politically-correct events they put on that they were known for, as they also exploited this country’s tyrannical ‘Hate Crime’ laws in order to get their premises registered as a ‘Hate Crime Reporting Centre’!  For those of you unfamiliar with how the concept of ‘Hate Crimes’ works, anybody seen expressing ‘hate’ in the eyes of the complainer is treated as guilty until proven innocent by the police.  How many patriots have received criminal records because of their beliefs because Todmorden Together reported them? Who Knows!  (Tellingly EVERY SINGLE issue of Fighting Back is believed to have been reported to the Police by this group, resulting in the author receiving numerous police visits!)

Ever the gold-diggers, this group also sucked up to yuppie fifth-column quangos like ‘Town Renaissance Board’, ‘Tod Pride’ and ‘Friends of the Town Hall’ and were given seats at the table, and then consistently advocated the opposite of what true locals wanted! They had a hand in the bitterly resented decision to move the market onto the car-park for months which caused a decline in footfall whilst the old run-down stalls were replaced with slightly-less run-down stalls.  They were just as keen to help Todmorden Pride and Conservative councillor Ian Cooper get Rose Street pulled down, a proposal that has now thankfully been kicked into the long grass thanks in no small part to the shift in public opinion instigated by the Todmorden BPP

However, Todmorden Together will always be best remembered for re-housing dozens of drug-addicts in Todmorden, evidence of this is hardly necessary as one can often see huge swarms of them hanging around outside the Post Office, waiting for one of their number to receive their generous top-tier ‘Incapacity Benefit Payments’.  As a result, not only has the local market been adversely affected but also housing prospects for many of the younger Todmorden people who had the good sense to stay off heroin!  It appeared last year that they were going to pull off a move into the vacant ‘Conservative Club’, and probably sub-let rooms out to other charities, binding them to them and making Todmorden Together the most powerful third-sector group in town but to the relief of residents of Rochdale Road this fell through

After a verbal assault on the present author of the BPP's 'Fighting Back' in Todmorden by Castro, we saw the writing on the wall... Since then things got a little sticky, and the BPP’s vociferous protestations about them were joined by more subtle resentments from other local voluntary groups and even by some Town Councillors (though most Town Councillors have behaved totally dishonourably and continued to flirt with the group).   Their Lottery and Council money started to dry up this year and the organization floundered on for as long as Castro’s salary (estimated to be in the £30,000 a year region) could be met.  The group limped on causing us to speculate whether Coun Ian Cooper, a long-standing ally of this corrupt group, was funding them.  We were disgusted to learn, however, that their funding had actually come from the ‘Board of Trustees’ of the Ashenhurst Community Centre who transferred all their remaining funds to Todmorden Together – this is shocking considering the fact that the centre was located in the middle of a pro-BPP area which shares our hatred of Louise Castro and her organization, and it shows that we are perfectly justified in our distrust of the so-called ‘Third Sector’...  The BPP would be grateful for any information concerning the identity of these treacherous trustees.

In the end the organization, after a long battle fought by the BPP, and the BPP alone, with a little help from the economic recession – Todmorden Together is dead: Good Riddance to them!