Views of Wales
UK must invest in future productivity
THE answer to the question “how do we make more than we spend?” is clearly to invest in our state and not to cut it back as Chancellor Osborne did, and as this government is doing in order to pay for Brexit.
All our most experienced civil servants are working on Brexit instead of solving our productivity deficit, and Theresa May’s cuts to school budgets mean that our future workforce will be even less equipped to deal with the challenges of automation.
Professor Simon Wren-Lewis has calculated that the amount of lost output, through self-defeating austerity cuts, equals the amount of the deficit. Welfare cuts in the pipeline will drive more people into destitution, and possibly prison in this short-term false economy of cutting to save expenditure, which can only mean more expenditure in the longer term, with less output to fund it.
Every businessman knows you need to invest money to make money, but our capitalism is consuming itself through ever-faster profit returns without investment in future productivity.
Government failure to properly tax these profits – for example, the profits large pharmaceutical companies make from the NHS – results in public services on the verge of collapse. At a time when the Government can borrow to invest in infrastructure for next to nothing, Tory failure to invest in Britain’s future is criminal and is reflected in our low growth rate, which has nothing to do with Brussels.
As much of our energy and rail infrastructure is owned by European countries it is difficult to see how Brexit will help us to take back control. Margaret Phelps Penarth
Not necessarily the best man for the job
VOTERS have debated for many years on whether MPs work to the best of their ability for their constituents.
The revelation on George Osborne’s newest job surely answers the question.
A person might be able to play every instrument in the orchestra but there is no way they could play them all well.
No wonder Britain is in trouble. No commitment or focus from the people elected to do the best possible for the country. J Price Coleford
Hospital staff are simply wonderful
I’VE had my first experience as a patient in the Princess of Wales Hospital, in Bridgend, the procedure being completed within two weeks of my visit to my GP.
While I cannot recommend an endoscopy as a leisure activity, the efficiency, kindness and cheerful bonhomie that I encountered in the department went a long way to compensate for a rather unpleasant but fascinating procedure.
If I shuffle off this mortal coil
in the near future, I absolve the National Health Service of any responsibility. John Lewis Betws, Bridgend
What’s going on that we don’t know about?
SINCE the recent “populist revolution,” the advent of post-truth, fake news and alternative facts, I’ve begun to step away from my normal liberal perspective and my daily intake of Channel 4 News from that nice Jon Snow and have become more objective.
I’m asking myself questions such as: why hasn’t there been any news of refugees making perilous journeys across the Mediterranean? Have they stopped? If so, why and when?
Is there still military conflict in Eastern Ukraine?
After the carnage of Aleppo when we daily witnessed on our screens scores of toddlers pulled from rubble covered in blood caused by the dastardly Russian and Syrian governments, why no footage or news from the West’s current, seemingly bloodless, liberation of Mosul from “so-called” Isis?
What has happened to the former occupants of the Calais jungle hellbent on crossing the Channel?
Has Greece solved its economic problems, as we’ve heard so little about it since well before Brexit?
British troops have just been sent to the Russian border in Estonia as part of a Nato show of strength to deter Russian aggression. Are Russian troops massing on the Estonian border, and if so why haven’t we been told?
What is actually happening out there? Dennis Coughlin Llandaff
Dyslexia should not prevent achievement
AS a dyslexic I support journalist Will Hayward’s article “Being dyslexic shouldn’t stop you achieving anything”. I left school with five GCE passes, failing maths and English language. I re-sat English seven times before giving up.
I had to leave a firm of accountants as I could not get articles. I am still an appalling speller; to me a computer’s spellcheck is the best invention. I also misread words, Algarve as Algrave and marjoram as marojam on notices and in newspapers.
I worked in a number of factories until age 26, when I was made redundant.
I was in the TA; and an officer, who was a solicitor, gave me a job as a clerk.
Years later I moved to another firm and was given articles. English literature was accepted as a qualification. I became a solicitor at 40.
At 60 I took a distance-learning course and obtained a master’s degree. Two years later I obtained a PG certificate in management and a diploma from Cambridge.
So I am a Cambridge graduate with dyslexia. My message to those with poor educational qualifications and learning difficulties is, don’t give up, keep trying, you can get there. I did. Neil Taylor Rhyl
‘Togetherness’ model is deeply divisive
IN the shadow of the fuss between Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon about a second independence referendum Carwyn Jones has been telling everyone this week that he believes that the United Kingdom is stronger together than apart.
But what does he mean exactly? At the moment “together” means a grossly undemocratic system in which the Celtic countries are totally under London – i.e. English – control. Even in those areas where our parliaments can make decisions it is only because London says we can.
The fights, legal bills and ill-will which this causes does no-one any good.
I and many other people – probably a lot more than your reporter Martin Shipton realises – support another form of togetherness. We want to see in the British Isles a family of independent, equal, co-operative nations working together for the common good in a partnership of respect.
To achieve this we will need a huge cultural shift in England. And also among those in Wales who sadly cannot see past our current second-class status.
But it will be achieved. And at the moment our best friend is Theresa May, whose every utterance shows how completely divisive the current model of “togetherness” actually is.
Meurig Parri Grangetown, Cardiff
Well done,Wayne, a great decision
PONDERING the decision of Wayne Barnes to not award a penalty try against Wales for repeated infringement at the scrum and breakdown in those extraordinary closing minutes at the Stade de France – seven penalties and a sinbin – presumably he intuitively felt he had been conned by the French prop substitution on the 80-minute mark. So well done, Wayne Barnes. Huw Beynon
Llandeilo
Theresa May has got the most awful cheek
HOW dare Theresa May refer to SNP and Plaid Cymru as “obsessively divisive” when her party has instigated the UK’s most politically divisive manoeuvre since the English civil war – the EU referendum!
David Charles Llandaf, Caerdydd