Johnson is starry-eyed...

week. These cuts risk a Covid debt crisis as 11 million people have built up £25 billion in arrears and debt since March 2020.

In Colne Valley, 8,580 people who receive Universal Credit will be affected by this cut. This includes 3,249 people who are also currently in work.

Problem debt disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in our society, and is higher amongst low-income households, women, lone parents, BAME communities, disabled people and renters.

This Covid debt crisis threatens to weigh down our community for years to come, worsening inequalities and making a genuine economic recovery impossible.

As well as reversing the £20 cut to Universal Credit, the government seriously needs to tackle problem of debt in the UK – this means introducing grants and making it easier for those in problem debt to write it down in a fair and manageable way.

Abdul Rashid, via email

making its way across the globe, ‘there’s no crisis’ he told us, instead he chose to ignore expert advice and took his then girlfriend to the country – a decision that could have led to a lot of unnecessary deaths in the 136,000 that have died since.

That number continues to increase at over 3,000 a month – even this hasn’t dented his ego, though he does insist that we draw a line under it.

Then he stands on stage and tells the party faithful that the fuel shortages and huge increases in the cost of energy this winter and empty supermarket shelves do not constitute a crisis, even when it involved the army, and they applauded him – he does like the applause. You have to hand it to him, he’s got some brass neck.

Allen Jenkinson

EVEN by the standards of our

Prime Minister, his speech to the Conservative Party Conference was nothing more than ‘an inverted pyramid of piffle’ – just another load of waffle and empty,vacuous slogans.

How can any government claim to be levelling up, when it is cutting Universal Credit and increasing National Insurance for the poorest workers?

If the government is really serious about levelling up, it is going to cost an enormous of money.

An apolitical think tank recently came up with a cost of £2 trillion to properly level up the country – something which was widely reported in our national newspapers.

Things like spending a few million quid tarting up Dewsbury Market is hardly going to cut it.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, there was a headline report in the Daily Mail which said the coming ‘cost of living crisis’ is likely to lead to an average family of four having to pay out an extra £1,800 per annum by the end of this year.

If this report is anything like right, then there are clearly going to be many people who are going to find themselves significantly worse off.

Beam me up to Planet Johnson, Scotty!

Steve Shackleton