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Radio 4,4 mins

Penrith and the Borders: Isolated from politics and people

Today

Available for over a year

As part of our series on 100 constituencies our chief correspondent Matthew Price reports from The Eden Valley, in the constituency of Penrith and the Borders, a vast seat with relatively few voters. Council funding has seen crucial services cut and infrastructure left unmaintained. As well as this Broadband and phone signal are poor meaning many have become truly isolated in the area. Peter Prudow is a resident that lost his job when the end of council subsidies for his crucial bus service meant the service was cut making his 25 mile journey to work impossible: “they just took your life away…because of this I lost my job… if I used a taxi it would have been 125 pounds… I enjoyed my job it got me out doing something” Douglas Charmers, pictured above, is a policy director for CLA, a body that represents rural land owners. He says that Cumbria isn’t just isolated geographically: ‘In the post today we got some of the election literature you always get, in this most rural of constituencies there’s not one mention of one rural issue’.

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