RICHARD A Bulloch (Examiner Mailbag, April 12) is mistaken if he thinks that having been a headteacher and never having gone on strike gives him moral authority to condemn currently serving teachers who are defending their working conditions and particularly their pension entitlements by striking.

People who have taught together in the same schools and communities have always been the best defenders of the education service and are almost always very committed to the children they teach.

Despite the incessant calumnies from national media and politicians, most parents recognise and respect that, even if the odd former headteacher who himself has never been on strike does not.

It is in the interests of children and their parents that intelligent, caring, well-qualified people are attracted into teaching and are encouraged to stay, developing experience and becoming respected members of their schools and communities.

This is more likely to happen if, during their careers, they can save for a secure retirement in old age, guaranteed by a pension scheme on which they can rely.

Unfortunately, both private and public sector pensions have been under attack for decades since Margaret Thatcher’s government cut the link between state retirement pensions and the growth in average earnings.

This has been a major way for employers and governments to cut their costs at workers’ expense. The current economic crisis and the government’s ‘austerity’ policy has provided a bogus excuse to increase those attacks massively.

If teachers and other workers are to defend the possibility of security in their old age, no-one will do it except themselves.

They must not only strike, but the strikes need to be built widely and up to a scale which can stop this arrogant Con-Dem government in its tracks.

The teaching unions – especially my own union the NUT – have been right to take the lead in this.

A country as a wealthy as Britain can afford a decent retirement for everyone and we should fight by every means we can to achieve it.

The disgraceful failure of the Labour Party to give full support to the struggle to save pensions shows the need for an alternative party which positively represents working people’s interests.

Perhaps Galloway’s win in Bradford will be a start.

Roger Keely

Socialist Workers’ Party and retired schoolteacher

Cars are needed

I AGREE with no name of Lepton. We are in a similar position. We need a car.

Buses only one an hour and only going in such a direction that you have to go almost into Huddersfield or Wakefield to get one going somewhere else.

No car would mean a taxi to the chemist and doctor. I can get my prescriptions delivered and I would have thought so could the senior citizen at Lepton.

You do not need a post office to get your pension unless you really are an old diehard.

Having said that, I need a car for shopping as the main supermarkets are at least three miles away and the only bus I can get does not go near any of them.

So I need diesel for the car which is essential. I do not need a post office. My pension is paid into an account.

I just need a free ATM and I can walk to a post office for that.

Or do it at an ATM when I’m out. I pay my bills by direct debit or an electronic transfer as need be.

So just to keep it straight. You do not need a car for everything as is written by Senior Citizen, but you do need it for the same things I need one for in Lepton. My partner has hospital appointments and is disabled.

No car means an expensive taxi or about two or three hours on buses, depending on timetables.

Martin Fletcher

Emley

Check tradesmen out

FOLLOWING recent publicity about homes being broken into by thieves being able to snap the lock, my elderly mother decided to have the locks on her doors changed to more secure models.

She rang a number advertised and a new lock was fitted to her front door.

Despite the new lock repeatedly jamming, my mother paid cash for the job and was told the lock would ease with use.

No guarantee was given and despite a receipt being given this did not include a company name or contact number.

We have tried repeatedly to contact the workman on the mobile number used in his advertisement to get him to sort out the problem but with no success as he never returns our calls and the advertisement is no longer being placed.

I would like to warn others, particularly the elderly and vulnerable, to only use tradesmen recommended by Age UK or Kirklees Council’s Gateway to Care.

My mother has since used such a tradesman who has fitted a correct lock and serviced the door mechanism for a lower price than she paid for the original poor workmanship.

Apparently, the first lock was an incorrect size for her door which a competent workman would have known.

This whole story has dragged on for two weeks over Easter and has upset my mother very much.

I would like others to be warned before their trust is also taken advantage of.

Annoyed

Birkby

A political invitation

BY far the most important letters printed are from people who are cynical about politics like Claire (Political Hot Air, Mailbag, April 13).

It should be up to us who write in about political matters to try to win her respect for politics by showing her it isn’t just an irrelevant Punch and Judy Show. It’s about our everyday lives.

The best way to win respect is to give it.

One of the main issues batted about on the letters page has been what state our country was in when Labour took over in 1997. After all, you can’t judge what Blair and Brown did without knowing where they had to start from.

We’ve been told they inherited a ‘Golden Legacy’ from the Tories and wasted it.

I’ve said that’s just not true.

However, I don’t want to get involved in anything which might look like ‘he said, you said.’ That’s what puts people off.

Instead, I’d like to let Claire see the evidence so she can make her own mind up on that one issue.

So, I’d like to offer a personal invitation (not a party political one) to Mr McGuin to look with me at the evidence about what Huddersfield was like in 1997.

I will do my best to fit in with his arrangements. We can then report back to Claire on these pages, basing what we say on neutral evidence which is free of the poison of party political bias.

Mr R A Vant

Holmfirth

Little chance at election

THERE was a recent letter in the Examiner bemoaning the fact that national politics seemed to be the driving force of the local elections.

I have first-hand experience of this. My friend, who has been a member of both Liberal and Labour parties, is running a campaign as an Independent for a seat on Tameside Council.

He works hard in the community and has delivered six letters by hand to every household. He has the welfare of the people at heart yet he knows he has a slim chance. Why? because in his area the Labour party dominate. They have 90% of the seats on the council and have a team to deliver their brightly coloured leaflets.

It goes without saying the Labour leaflets attack the Coalition government and blames every single cut on them.

Unfortunately, as a Tory , I could not help him but I admire his spirit and enthusiasm against overwhelming odds.

Knowing what I know about him and his personal struggles in the past when he lived in Huddersfield, I wish I could convert him to the cause and get a party machine behind him.

His principles would not allow him to do so because he thinks independent minded people should vote on their conscience on behalf of the constituents and not be swayed by party opinion.

If ever anyone deserved to be a councillor then my friend Carl Simmons should be.

But, as your letter writer points out, party politics take over in local elections and he will probably lose.

I am influenced by the great Conservative Edmund Burke when, addressing the Bristol voters, he said, if elected, he would owe nothing to the electors but the right to exercise his conscience. Would all politicians were like that.

Bernard McGuin

Marsh

Legacy questions

MR R A Vant in his ‘Golden Legacy’ letter (Mailbag, April 10) devotes a large portion of it to the NHS and schools legacy left by the Tory Government in 1997.

Mr Vant, two questions for you to ponder: 1) Which administration in 2005 announced the closure of St Luke’s Hospital?

2) Why in 2011/12 are numerous schools in Huddersfield planning to use prefabricated buildings as classrooms? Not a brilliant legacy considering the hundreds of billions of pounds spent on the NHS and schools?

M G

Crosland Moor

Public payroll

IN Letters to the Editor on April 16 Bernard McGuin argued that the last Labour government had expanded the ‘state payroll’ to increase its control of society.

We should be grateful that the Tories have revealed the true reasons behind their denigration and savage cutting of the public sector. Most of us, however, see additional public spending in terms of more teachers, nurses and police officers, on whose work we all depend.

Mary Blacka

Holmfirth