Flybe takes off with the tax passengers have already paid

From: Michael Green, Baghill Green, Tingley.

I’M glad the Government is proposing to review Air Passenger Duty (The Yorkshire Post, January 15). I hope this will include considering what the purpose of APD is, whether the duty in its current form achieves its objectives and whether it has any unwanted side-effects.

But this ought to have nothing to do with the current financial situation of the Flybe airline. APD is paid by passengers in with the price of their tickets. So, for existing bookings, Flybe have already collected the tax.

If, as reported, Flybe owe an estimated £106m, that can only be because they have chosen to pocket the money for the time being rather than hand it over to the taxman. That’s naughty. In fact, it may even be unlawful. It’s only too easy to play fast and loose with other people’s money. Flybe will get no sympathy from me.

In fact, wouldn’t it be nice if each passenger were to sue Flybe to get their payment back (with interest, of course) on the basis that Flybe have misappropriated it. In return, there would be an undertaking to hand the payment back again once there is a guarantee that it will be transferred straight to the tax authorities where it ought to have gone in the first place.

From: Robert Reynolds, Bradford Road, Cleckheaton.

I’M wondering how to spend my ‘‘Brexit dividend’’. You know, the extra money we were promised would arrive from leaving the EU? Maybe a new car, or a holiday (abroad?), perhaps a revamp of the bathroom or kitchen. But I jest, there will be no dividend.

Instead, there will be pain – a lot of it. Probably ending with the collapse of sterling and Boris Johnson, that clown in Downing Street, running to the IMF with a begging bowl.

People are waiting – in the freezing cold – for a bus that will never arrive, to take them to an unknown destination. At some point they will be forced to admit that they have been deceived. What then?

From: E&J Burnett, Routh, Beverley.

I’M sure most of us remember the “I’m Backing Britain” campaign. I think we now need an “I’m not backing China” campaign. By looking at the labels on what we buy, most of our goods etc are produced there.

We know that their coalpowered plants are proliferating. If we include transportation, the damage to the environment is horrendous and irreversible, to say nothing of the exploitation of labour in that country.