NOW that the bubble has burst for Cameron and Clegg and a hung parliament is on the cards it is time for the leaders of the three main parties to put aside their differences and spend the next five years working for the common good.
It is essential the most skilled and experienced politicians work together to get the country back on its feet. The time for squabbling has ended and only a concerted effort will resolve our massive financial problems and restore full employment which is the key to our prosperity.
Only such action will show that our leaders truly have the best interests of the country at heart and not personal ambition.
Optimist
Huddersfield
All hanging together
I AM having some difficulty with the meaning of words. When listening to a party political broadcast by the leader of one of the main parties I was pleased to hear the gentleman repeatedly state that, as a people, we should ‘come together, join together, work together ... to mend our broken society’ etc.
Sitting down thereafter to read my national daily newspaper the same party leader was reported as not being willing to work together with other parties but was intent on forming a government on the basis of our bonkers electoral system.
A strange form of togetherness, it seemed.
There have been successful shared governments in many countries for many years where working together is the norm as in New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. A form of proportional representation was imposed on Germany by the victors after World War 2.
Johny Berryman
Slaithwaite
Enjoying the theatre
WELL, it’s that time again when we change one set of public school educated millionaires for another who tell us that they know what we want and they will fight to deliver it.
They rarely achieve this laudable intention or even get close, but we can at least enjoy the theatre.
In effect, we rarely notice who is nominally in power. Even the local elections leave us similarly unaffected which is disappointing as I would have thought here at least the candidates for the council are reasonably local and therefore accountable to near neighbours.
It seems to me that it doesn’t matter who is in charge. Council officers make the decisions in Kirklees and they even object to enquiries made under the Freedom of Information Act.
I will have voted for the councillor who promises to control officers who take decisions they are not entitled to take.
Trevor Woolley
Linthwaite
A debt to society
SO the cat is finally out of the bag courtesy of Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England.
This country is in a horrific amount of debt which will take a generation or more to pay off.
To those of us who saw this recession coming five years ago it’s no surprise at all that thanks to 13 years of borrow-and-squander Labour governments we are deeper in the mire than we’ve ever been. And that doesn’t even include private debt.
Gordon Brown’s solution? Borrow more.
Either of our own volition or because the IMF will force us to, we’re going to suffer either savage public spending cuts or massive tax increases. Really and truly, can anyone see it being the former?
One thing’s for sure. The next time this boy’s laid off he won’t be rushing to find a £6-an-hour job repacking Baby Bio just so Kirklees Council can employ £50,000 a year managers and £60,000 a year plasterers.
Richard Huddleston
West Slaithwaite
Charm v substance
CHARMED by Nick Clegg, recent converts to the Lib Dems are unlikely to have looked very closely at the Party.
Not only is its Parliamentary Party all-white and middle-class, with an all-male front bench, but some of its policies are highly suspect.
Its libertarian traditions have given us attractive policies on civil liberties and political reform but other areas – defence and immigration – need closer scrutiny.
It’s not hard to create a seductive wish-list when your policies won’t be tested in action. Now that the plausible Mr Clegg fancies being Prime Minister, we need to look more closely before we trust him.
According to the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies the proposed fiscal innovation – raising the tax threshold to £10,000 – would, in practice, help those on higher incomes more than those on low (and the truly poor not at all), increasing rather than decreasing inequality.
Add to this their proposal to abolish the Child Trust Fund and it becomes clear that the Lib Dems have never been truly engaged with social and economic policy and public service.
They are amateurs in this field, making up policy on a daily basis.
Witness the fudge on the crowd-pleasing – and vote-winning – abolition of university fees. Having passed the resolution in 2009, they are now shifting about. They’ll bring it in over a six-year period – that is, if they can afford it.
As for their claim to be far-sighted Europeans, not only did Clegg have to backtrack on the euro, but the Lib Dem vision is largely limited to fortress Europe and lacks experienced internationalism.
First-time voters and defectors from the Labour Party should think again. The Labour Party has had its failures and mistakes, but it has invested in schools, hospitals and children’s centres, recruited thousands of teachers and nurses and taken care of older citizens.
With its overall investment in public services – including financing the huge improvements in our neglected town centres – it has made a real difference to the lives of most of us and it has shown where its priorities lie – in public service and improving life for most people.
Can the LibDems, who rightly value individual freedom but prioritise it over public service, meet the needs of the majority of people? I doubt it.
M P M Brown
Linthwaite
Importance of voting
I SHALL vote today, remembering that the vote was hard won and was a real breakthrough in terms of ‘ordinary’ people having some kind of representation in Parliament.
The idea of democracy that this is supposed to represent has been undermined by the unelected sections in society whose interests are not served by the majority of us having a real say in the kind of lives we want.
The ‘presidential’ political debates have been a complete charade, offering no genuine choice of government.
The reality is that whoever gets elected will be expected to make huge cuts in public spending – which will affect us all, but will affect the poorest most.
The elected government will do this because their real role has been increasingly to serve the interests of their capitalist masters – the people who are already rich and do not intend to lose a penny in this recession.
Use your vote to vote for the candidate who you feel best serves the interests of working people but then be prepared resist the onslaught in jobs and services that we are about to face.
In the course of this resistance there is a chance that those involved begin to understand why the struggle for the vote was so important and how a genuine democracy can be won.
June Jones
Marsden
Enough is enough
SKILLED immigration is not the problem (Mailbag, May 5). It’s about the mass influx of asylum seekers and EU migrants that are changing the face of Britain!
My parents came to this country from India in the 1960s when their skills were needed. They didn’t receive handouts from the government like asylum seekers who are just a drain on resources.
They contributed to the British economy and still do.
This time I won’t be voting for Labour or the Lib Dems who want an amnesty on illegal immigrants. Enough is enough. We need to make Britain a stronger country, not an overcrowded and weak society!
Rav
Huddersfield
Fearing Thatcherites
AS the three main parties still haven’t come clean over how they intend finding the vast bulk of the money to pay for the country’s financial crisis, the electorate really has little but history to go on in deciding which party to vote for.
Therefore, despite the utter contempt New Labour has shown for its traditional core voters, they are still more likely, if past governments are anything to go by, to be the least unfair to most people.
As far as the Lib Dems are concerned, their manifesto commitment to give the public a vote on whether we should come out of Europe makes voting for them very tempting.
However, as they have never been in power nationally since their formation, it is impossible to say how they would perform.
As to whether we can trust them, we only have their record in local government to go by.
The recent televised debates were interesting and if Britain was voting for a president there would be little doubt in my mind that the shiny, well-groomed and articulate David Cameron would emerge the winner. He claims to be a one-nation Tory and, if so, good for him.
Unfortunately, we are voting instead for a government.
If Mr Cameron’s party is successful, then out of the murky shadows will emerge the Thatcherites – wisely kept off our television screens in case they frighten the children.
Rumour has it these people are waiting to be unleashed to inflict savage cuts onto the unsuspecting British public.
You have been warned.
Robert Nicholls
Kirkburton
