Accrington Observer

ELECTION PREDICTION

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THE so-called experts are the only people who really enjoy elections because it gives them the chance to air their opinions or so-called expertise.

This election seems to be more about Brexit, yet it’s not the Conservati­ves or Labour who voted for Brexit, it was the combined people of the United Kingdom, something Nicola Sturgeon for one doesn’t seem to understand or accept.

The opposition parties say that the government must get a good deal, whatever that means.

The other parties will try to put their point of view over to the general public in their manifestos. Does the general public bother about these manifestos? Has any party that has been in government ever carried out what they promise in these documents?

They may set out with good intentions but at the end of the day there is always an excuse why these promises are never fully carried out. Because they are basically implausibl­e in the first place, or there is a shortage of funds, or there is not enough time in this parliament etc.

Jeremy Corbyn has said that he will increase the minimum wage to £10. People may think that this will happen immediatel­y if Labour win the election, but it won’t happen till 2020 at the earliest. By then the minimum wage could well have reached that figure no matter who is in power.

Big companies who are not paying their fair share of tax are going to be investigat­ed and perhaps prosecuted we keep being told. We’ve heard all this time and time again, promises that are never fully fulfilled. There is talk that the Conservati­ves will this time increase taxes, VAT rates, National Insurance, the triple lock on pensioners may be removed, so as to give the lower paid more money, but this would upset the grey voters.

The Conservati­ves may have to decide where their support comes from – from the grey voters or the lower-paid the unemployed or the middle classes. Nobody knows what the future holds. Whichever way the vote goes on June 8th you can be assured that the United Kingdom will face at least a generation of uncertaint­y.

And if the minimum wage is raised to £10, you can be assured that the small businesses who employ these low-paid workers will either have to increase their prices or lay staff off so that they don’t have to make price increases, or close down, it will also open the flood gates to all the other unions demanding a pay increase for their members so as to keep the wage differenti­al between their members and the lower-paid workers.

There may be so-called solidarity between the unions when they are attacking a Conservati­ve government but when it comes to wages it is a different kettle of fish. AP Moxham Mill Lane Great Harwood

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