The £8 billion cost of delaying move to Brexit

Johnny Briggs, actor Dick Clement, scriptwriter, George Lazenby, actor, Raquel Welch, actress Werner Herzog, film director, Al Stewart, singer/ songwriter, Michael Keaton, actor, Mark Ramprakash, cricketer, Adam Hollioake, cricketer, THE old joke that we shouldn’t bother voting because the politicians always win has some truth in it.

While we may be entertained by the Labour and Conservative parties squabbling with each other, often over matters that have little consequence to the majority of us, important issues get overlooked.

Is £8 billion (or even £15 billion gross) of taxpayer’s money important?

Not according to the Tory government and the Labour opposition, apparently.

The politicians of both parties colluded in delaying, by about nine months, the invoking of Article 50 to honour the Referendum vote to leave the EU.

So we are paying into the EU for nine months longer than we needed to.

David Cameron, in February 2016, referring to Article 50 beginning the process of exit (in the event of a leave vote) said: “... the British people would rightly expect that to start straight away.”

Parliament could have voted to invoke Article 50 in July 2016, thereby heading off any court cases.

It didn’t because politicians decided that their intransigence was more important than our money.

Even a small fraction of that wasted £8 billion would keep our HRI open, even allowing for the PFI scandal and NHS management incompetence.

It is no good the tribal supporters of both Labour and Conservatives whining that the other is most to blame – it just means the politicians win, again. And we, the people, lose. IT has happened at last. Health and safety’s over-zealousness has struck Parliament where it hurts – right in the bong. Big Ben’s bong, to be precise.

Nobody was told health and safety had to turn off Big Ben’s chime during four years of restoration work ... hence a furore unfolded.

Supposedly the bong is an integral part of lawmaking so the issue is quite serious. And yes, lawmakers get to argue that health and safety is manifestly stupid and should therefore be changed or ignored. Meanwhile I note your article on Greenhead Park (August 29). The decline of all aspects of the parks department has been going on and getting worse for around eight years.

Problems have been caused by flawed thinking by Kirklees Council.

All of these people regard spending in parks as a waste of money. And by cutting funding they will save money - wrong.

It has been proven by research by Sheffield University that spending on parks earns money for towns. Research proved that where floral plantings were placed in shopping malls, those areas had more shoppers who also spent more than malls with no floral areas in them.

So Kirklees Council are wrong in their basic thinking on parks.