Rise in minimum wage would help care workers

Once again Barry demonstrates that he has been in the job way too long and is out of touch with reality, not least a big chunk of his constituents that he chooses to ignore. Time to move on and get a fresh approach and one who doesn’t rely on the “transient” student vote or the Block votes of communities to keep his “throne”.

Jack Cunningham, Labour politician, 81; Martin Jarvis, actor, 79; Georgina Hale, actress, 77; Billy Bob Thornton, actor, 65; Ian Broudie, musician/ producer (Lightning Seeds), 62; Mary Decker, former track athlete, 62; Barack Obama, former president of the United States, 62; Lee Mack, comedian, 52; Greta Gerwig, actress, 37.

SUE Evans (Feedback, July 31) is correct in saying social care workers are not employed by the Government, but also wrong, when she suggests the Government, therefore, cannot facilitate some financial recognition of the fantastic work they have done during the pandemic – and from my own family’s experience, a long time before Covid 19 was ever heard of.

There is nothing whatsoever to stop the Government putting money into social care to explicitly reward social care workers, if this is something they want to do, regardless of the current funding, commissioning and delivery arrangements for social care.

As an alternative, the Government could simply increase the minimum wage, given this is what many social care workers receive, either generally as part of their levelling up agenda, or if needs be for social care workers only.

This would, though, add further financial pressure to our effectively broken social care system, something the Tories have so far had 10 years and counting in government to sort out, and in all that time, have failed to properly address.

It is pure hypocrisy for the Government to laud, applaud and regularly compliment social care workers during the height of pandemic, when they were putting their lives on the line (in many cases for a pittance), and then forget about them when things begin to ease down.

Social care workers deserve more than a badge.

Kirklees is no good for Huddersfield

IT is amazing, I think I have agreed in principle with most of the letters printed in the paper these last three or four weeks.

Kirklees is a total disappointment for Huddersfield.

I feel Batley, Dewsbury etc have been backed to the detriment of Huddersfield with some councillers wanting to waste money on street art etc, and also create garden streets.

Well they have a head start there, with pavements, kerbs etc covered in weeds.

They do not pay heed to the people of Huddersfield, only lip service, this of course is modern democracy (the tail wagging the dog).

When anyone sees a photo of the iconic Castle Hill, they will always say Huddersfield, NOT Kirklees.

Mr Sheerman is still pushing the Thandi Bros, but says he would like to know what is under the hill. What with his spies in the town and informants on the council, I would have thought his ‘moles’ would have told him.

I also believe the green space area planned for the Piazza will just be a campus for the university.

The council has bought the

Piazza area, did they sell it in the first place like they sold the new Court House Municipal Building, then rented the buildings back?

Nobody wants Cross Church Street pedestrianised, but it obviously goes with council plans to kill off the town centre.

A perfect example is the threat to the Plumbers Arms landlord to remove seating in the space. Could not a compromise be reached where a licence could be issued for them to remain for the remainder of summer, or indeed to the end of pandemic?

They have improved the space.

We’re still battling the first spike

DURING Friday’s Hancock’s Half Hour, on July 31, Boris threatened that if certain areas didn’t stop making the government’s Corona figures look bad, he would place them under house arrest, again – ‘it’s your own fault, you brought it on your selves, we have to ‘control’ a second spike.’

We aren’t heading towards a second spike, the first one isn’t over yet, it’s only over when people stop dying,

As that other unfunny comedian Frank Carson used to say, “It’s the way we tell them.”