Individuals must live within their means

I FOUND Ms Penny King’s letter of May 18th bemusing at best and angering at worst. She clearly does not believe that the citizens of our country need to recognise the value of ‘living within our means’ as individuals and that well, instead everyone should adopt a policy of ‘if it exists, afford it or not, I am entitled to it’.

I am also angry that she fails to value any education and encouragement of support to those struggling, suggesting that not one iota of financial or housekeeping guidance would ever have any value to those who would benefit most from it. Is that because she supports a system which keeps the poor in poverty so they can be constantly dependent upon the State and thus controlled by it, rather than free and so other citizens can secure some strange sense of superiority by looking down upon those in such ongoing need?

There is also colossal clap-trap out there taken as fact, such as this weekend’s news – 500,000 people’s passports delayed, and

40% of all energy users likely to be unable to pay their bills. I wonder how many of the first group out on holiday overseas are also in the second group? I mean, please, come on! And where is the sense of encouraging personal responsibility for some of those day-by-day decisions and passing on that encouragement to one’s children?

She is absolutely right, however, in her challenge in that yes, I believe there should be better financial education to help people in need.

It’s one of the core objectives behind the Philip J Milton & Company Plc Charitable Foundation in fact and perhaps she would care to support it? We don’t have the answers yet but we are working towards that.

Being envious of billionaires is simply that. What counts are the figures on absolute poverty and the advances we have made as a society over the years.

As for the government, it is now extracting the most tax from people (and the highest sums from the wealthiest) since World War Two, so her assertion is wrong (and it is too taxing frankly). Value the tax, investment and employment these people provide to our nation and from which all of us and our public services benefit in one way or another. Frighten them offshore to fulfil some naïve, personal, envy problem and we all lose. She notes Sweden for a better income equality but that is because their taxes are even higher and the very wealthy have indeed fled that punitive regime (several living here) to pay taxes at lower rates elsewhere.

There is less crime and imprisonment as their moral attitudes are better and the temperatures too extreme for most casual, albeit persistent criminals to want to endure them.

Philip J Milton

North Devon