I WOULD like to raise some concerns regarding the impending welfare cuts, which are operational from April 1.

One in particular pertains to the bedroom tax.

This tax will have the effect of hitting some of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens. It will impact on the lives of disabled people, their carers and other poor and disadvantaged groups.

The Government estimates that the bedroom tax will save £480m.

However, savings would logically only come from low-earning families refusing to move and thereby disrupt children’s schooling.

For those who do move, they will be at the mercy of private landlords and the housing benefit bill will rise due to very high rents in the private sector.

To illustrate this point it is important to remember that wherever people live in the UK, a one bedroom privately rented home is far more expensive than a two bedroom council house or housing association property.

Fair rents were previously in place until Margaret Thatcher abolished them in the 1980s.

Polly Toynbee in the Guardian (March 15) quotes two cases and these are typical of many who are suffering behind closed doors as they await the implementation of this dreaded bedroom tax.

There is a disabled man in Reading with chronic lung disease who says: “My partner, also my carer, and me share a home, but not a bedroom as most nights I am coughing and vomiting. Obviously this would keep her awake.”

Secondly, another distressed woman explains: “My partner has paranoid schizophrenia. The second bedroom is now classed as spare.

“I wonder if anyone has tried to sleep with someone with this condition as it is virtually impossible.”

It is also important to note that new estimates from the charity Carers UK and Leeds University show that the UK’s 6.4 million unpaid carers save the treasury £119 billion per year.

I can only conclude that these spiteful policies are ideologically driven and the consequences will be those of enormous upheaval for those who can least defend themselves.

I wish to live in a fair and civilised society that does not introduce welfare cuts which kick people when they are down and at their most vulnerable.

I very much hope that sooner rather than later this government sees the error of its ways and scraps this iniquitous and cruel bedroom tax.

Valentina McParland

Crosland Hill

There’s no such tax

THERE is no such thing as the bedroom tax. It’s simply a way to free up more property from people who don’t need it to people who do.

Despite all the doom-mongering, people who are disabled, elderly and foster parents are not included.

All over the country and more than ever in London, people on benefits are living in mansions or properties with spare bedrooms and bachelor boys in two and three bedroomed houses.

If left-wingers such as Ian Brooke wish to subsidise and continue to keep these people in the manner they are now accustomed too let them continue to vote Labour. Well done Ian Duncan Smith.

K Oakes

Taylor Hill

It’s not first class

SO Steve McGuinness, Royal Mail delivery director (‘Royal Mail on target for HD postcode deliveries’, Examiner, March 2), delivering “high quality service to our customers.” Eh? How come a kind-hearted neighbour from the same number on an adjoining street had to drop off our post for the umpteenth time this morning?

And how come paperwork to stop us receiving the ridiculous volume of sale leaflets we get has not been received even though it was promised in a telephone conversation on February 2?

We can all see which customers are Royal Mail’s highest priority. The ‘service’ is a complete shambles at absurd prices.

Kevin Miller

Meltham

Keep toilets open

I AM annoyed that Mirfield Town Council did not do enough to clarify Kirklees Council’s intentions regarding the public toilets in Station Road, Mirfield.

Mirfield Labour Party was ready to campaign for their retention but when we heard via a leading town councillor that the town council was being given another year to find a way to keep them open we suspended our campaign to give the town council a chance to produce a viable solution.

Now we are told the toilets will close on April 1 so time is very short. The way forward therefore now appears to be for Mirfield Town Council to fund the toilets for at least the next 12 months while it seeks a permanent solution. I call on them to do so.

It is a disgrace that Kirklees Council should have been forced to consider closing all the unstaffed public toilets in its area.

The reason it has had to do this and reduce other services as well is because of the severity and unfairness of the government’s grant cuts. Major local authorities like Kirklees should be given much greater freedom to decide about the services that are what its people want and need.

Central government interference in local democracy has gone too far and the strain is now showing as never before.

Sarah J Cook

Campaign Co-ordinator, Mirfield Labour Party

Stark differences

THERE couldn’t be a more stark contrast in the attitude towards education than that between the children of a school in Huddersfield and those of a school in Africa.

Friday’s Examiner headline ‘Kindles, watches and bikes to beat truancy’ – children having to be rewarded for attending a school on their doorstep which gives them free education. Their parents being rewarded too.

Friday’s Comic Relief saw African children walking two hours to and from school for an education for which their parents had to pay.

Those whose parents could not find the means to pay had to stay at home.

S Wood

Huddersfield

A right reward?

IS it me just being an old gripe in thinking that it seems wrong rewarding children by giving them bikes, kindles and watches for attending school (Examiner, March 15) which is not an option but a necessity for all children?

In my day it was the “board man” our mothers were frightened of, even if we were legitimately ill and I cannot remember any cases of anyone “not bothered” to attend school and the only people being “knocked up” were the early morning workers. When does the reward for attending end? Does it continue into working life when it is called a wage?

MRS N CLARKE

Almondbury