Why single out football players for criticism?
I READ about footballers being criticised for not taking a pay cut in these terrible times, despite many of them contributing a massive amount to the fight against the virus, homelessness etc,.
But this same criticism doesn’t seem to be getting levelled at other people with incredible incomes. If you think top-level footballers are paid grotesque amounts all you have to do is don’t pay to watch them, don’t buy the shirts and so on.
Yet there are people on incredible amounts of money per year that we can’t get out of paying a contribution towards.
Take the royal family. Apparently they had assets of £72bn pounds in 2017, raked in £583m last year, with the Queen getting £67m of that out of our taxation. Yet there seems to have been no mention of her taking a ‘furlough,’ pay cut or whatever, when she was preaching ‘to the nation’ the other day.
The wealth that many of the ‘elite’ of society holds could stand them making a major contribution to the crisis without it even making a dent in their lavish lifestyles. Yet it is only the, predominantly working class, footballers that are singled out, while those on pitiful wages, no contracts and self-employed bear the brunt of economic collapse.
Bill Flynn, Farnworth
Leadership at loggerheads
IN his first interview as leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer attacks the Government ,saying it has made major mistakes tackling the virus. However while he says people should follow the Government’s instructions to stay at home, it was also reported that his deputy Angela Rayner said the police should not stop people sunbathing.
One day in and the two people leading the Labour Party have opposing views. Doesn’t bode well for the future. Let’s stop attacking the Government and the police and aim our vitriol at the people ignoring the lockdown rules.
Jack Haynes, Swinton
Majority are obeying rules
IN a country of 60 million people there is bound to be a few silly Billys (silly Billys being a quote once famously attributed to the late veteran Labour politician Denis Healey), who are flouting the sensible rules about everyone needing to be two metres or more from any other person.
In my opinion, based upon what I have observed the vast majority of the British public are doing exactly as we are supposed to be doing at the present time in order to be safe from the coronavirus.
If you go out for a walk you can instantly see that there are very few cars on the road.
And you can also see that the town centres are very quiet- apart from where you can possibly observe a number of people ( not usually a lot of people) queuing at a safe distance from each other to go into one of the main supermarkets.
So I do not see the main problem as being that loads of people are flouting the stay at home rule- I see a more significant problem as being the long time that it is taking for those in authority to introduce the mass testing that is so desperately needed at the present time in order to potentially save lives.
Stay indoors for NHS sake
PLEASE stay home and think of others. I’m a mum of two daughters who are both nurses.
Chris Smith, Baguley
Time for HS2 rethink
IT’S time for a rethink on HS2. People are managing working from home on laptops so why the need for £100bn plus white elephant vanity project, just for the tiny few to make personal fortunes from public money and to indulge their little hobby of riding on a new train, as the devastated countryside flashes by their window seat?
First Class of course, charged to their company or government expenses!
Simon Icke, via email