Residents need more money

I am a reluctant Conservative voter.

The last time I voted Labour was for Tony Blair because part of his electoral promises was to change the voting system to get a democratic outcome at the polls - i.e. the party in power would have more than 50% of the vote, not as we have now.

But being a politician he reneged on this promise when he got a huge majority.

I reluctantly vote Tory because I agree trade is the primary engine that drives any economy, but the Tory version of what is good for trade does not sit well

with me.

They are wholly concerned with businesses and not with the totality of what is required for trade to continue.

Every business has one essential requirement in common - customers.

However, to be a customer you need the purchasing power to buy whatever the particular business has to sell.

When I was a child nobody bought a tea or coffee at a café because they didn’t have enough money.

So there weren’t any cafés. Our holidays were camping because we couldn’t afford hotels. Our means of transport was the bus.

When the people who spend money got more spending power, cafés had customers and thrived. Holidays got more adventurous, airlines and airports expanded and employed thousands of people.

People are now car owners in an industry that employs 10s of thousands.

This was all because the people who spend money have money to spend.

The government should be more concerned with generating customers to keep businesses going.

Consumer spending is stagnating because they don’t have the same spending power as they did 12 years ago.

After years of below-inflation increases in income, the majority of consumers have now reached the end of the line with no available money to spend on non

essentials.

Shell and BP made a combined profit of more than £55 billion. This money has come out of the pockets of customers and should be circulating in the economy keeping all the businesses going. All businesses need to make a profit and that includes the customers.

But the excess of these profits should be taken in taxes and given back to the people who spend, so they can then return to being customers.

Alan Hardie-storey