I’m prepared for another winter of discontent...
DURING the early Seventies, I was a young mother with two small children — one was just a couple of months old — when the Labour Party was out of control, with the unions dictating policy.
During the industrial turmoil, I was forced to survive in a cold house, with not even the ability to warm my baby’s bottle, as I had an all-electric heating and cooking system.
Fast forward to Ed Miliband’s attempt to gain the tenancy of No10 Downing Street, and I was so concerned that this son of a proclaimed Marxist would gain power, I bought a small generator because I feared that my daughter and small grandchild would be subject to a repeat of the mayhem of 40 years earlier.
It didn’t transpire as David Cameron was elected and the threat was removed.
I advertised my unused generator to create space in my shed. It failed to sell.
Now we have a Labour leader in Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor in John McDonnell that espouse re-nationalisation of our public services.
In the unlikely event the British public would be seduced by their promises, I have decided to retain my generator, just in case! LINDA KENDALL, Rayleigh, Essex.
No to fox hunting
I’M WRITING in response to the PM’s pledge to hold a free vote on overturning the ban on fox hunting. This would be a mistake: 84 per cent of people in England and Wales want fox hunting to remain illegal — the kind of public support politicians only dream of.
Rather than pandering to a vocal minority who want to return Britain to the dark ages of animal cruelty ‘for fun’, we call on all politicians not only to reject any repeal, weakening or substitution of the Hunting Act 2004, but also to support its strengthening and its better enforcement.
BILL ODDIE, OBE, League Against Cruel Sports president, Godalming, Surrey.
Wasted asset
PRESTWICK Airport is costing the taxpayer a fortune but it is an asset we should be maximising.
Instead of pushing independence in Dublin, Nicola Sturgeon should have been talking to Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline, to persuade them to get involved.
Prestwick has a runway that can cope with the largest commercial passenger and cargo flights and a dedicated rail link – a rarity in the UK. Don’t blame the airport for its woes. Blame a clueless Scottish Government who’ve no head for business. J. WATSON, Ayr.
‘With Europe, not of it’
I READ about Ian McEwan wishing death on millions who voted Leave (Sarah Vine) as he thinks that’s the way the old voted, but I know of many young people who voted Leave. In the referendum of 1975, the young voted for the EU. Those voters are now the old and they realised we were all duped.
We thought we were voting for a common market. Little did we know how, over the years, this would change into a behemoth whose diktats, regulations and laws would affect our lives.
If Brexit hadn’t happened, the EU would have marched on, demanding more money to fund this profligate Union, buying its way into institutions, unions and science research as a form of bribery to keep them onside.
As Churchill said: ‘We are with Europe but not of it.’ I think that sums up Brexit.
PETER JEFFRIES, Sutton Coldfield, W. Mids
Cloud cuckoo Corbyn
WHAT a cloud cuckoo land wishlist in the Labour manifesto. In 2010, the corporation tax rate was 28 per cent and the total tax collected was £43billion.
By 2016 the rate was reduced to 19 per cent and the total tax collected had gone to more than £49billion. Lower rates means more investment, more jobs and more tax collected. Labour’s ‘fully costed’ manifesto relies on the tax take increasing to £50billion.
Labour’s Gordon Brown began the destruction when he started taxing dividends within pension schemes. Jeremy Corbyn seems hellbent on finishing the job.
T. TAYLOR, Woodthorpe, N. Yorks.
Exclusive ‘inclusion’
THERE has been much talk by Fife Council’s new SNP and Labour co-leaders of ‘coming together in a spirit of collaboration and co-operation’ and of basing the political governance of the Council on ‘an inclusive decision-making process’.
This might have been more convincing if the SNP and Labour had not made a point of excluding the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Conservatives from their love-in.
Indeed Conservative group leader Dave Dempsey had proposed a genuine power-sharing administration which would have given all four parties a say according to the number of seats gained. This would have been a true and complete reflection of the vote on May 4, especially as Conservatives topped the polls in many wards and increased their number at Fife House fivefold.
Both Labour and SNP were following orders from Edinburgh not to work with the ‘toxic Tories’. So much for the co-leaders’ claim to ‘put the needs and priorities of Fife residents first, separate from national political issues’.
The ostensible reason given by both parties for not working with us was the so-called austerity agenda, although this has no place in the Fife Conservative manifesto. The supreme irony is that austerity in Fife in the last ten years has largely been down to decisions made by the SNP at Holyrood and Labour at Fife House.
LINDA HOLT, Councillor for East Neuk & Landward, Anstruther, Fife.
Tech has gone too far
HEARING of the recent cyberattacks on the NHS took me back 20 years or so to when my wife was head receptionist at a surgery.
At a meeting, it was explained how, in future, appointments would be made using computers. My wife remarked that surely it would be quicker and easier to carry on making an entry in the appointments book but, needless to say, she was put in her place.
At about the same time, I saw a letter in the Birmingham Post, which stated: ‘In years to come, the invention of the microchip will be seen as the worst thing to befall mankind in the 20th century.’
Observing the zombies glued to devices on our streets and school playgrounds, I have plenty of sympathy with this statement.
DAVID WHALLEY, Water Orton, Warks.