OH to live in Cath Ingham’s New Labour fantasy world (‘Unbroken Britain’, Mailbag March 26).
That would be a world where babies are not starved nor tortured to death; where well-respected shopkeepers are not brutally killed; where children do not torture other children for fun; where drug-dealers do not roam our streets, nor their clients burgle our houses to fund expensive habits; where vast swathes of the working-age population are not consigned to a benefit-dependent wilderness; where terminally-ill people are not denied life-enhancing drugs on the grounds of ‘cost-effectiveness’; where elderly people are not sadly neglected in uncaring institutions.
Unfortunately for me I live in the real world, not in some New Labour wonderland where appearance is all and spin beats substance.
It is indeed praiseworthy that very many people are glad to give generously of their time and money in order to help others, but this should not deflect our attention from the deeper malaise of today’s Britain.
Labour’s approach to our social problems reminds me of that of a dubious second-hand car salesman – give the bodywork a good coating of wax, polish the chrome, valet the interior and ignore the faulty engine. With luck the customer might not think to check the mechanics until the deal is done.
A shiny exterior does not mean that all is well beneath the bonnet. However, before we can start to make repairs we have to acknowledge the faults. Denial of problems prevents us taking effective action to counter them. New Labour is in deep denial.
Bill Armer
Deighton
Driving trade away
AS I live overlooking Spring Grove Street car park I saw from the number of cars that it was a poor Easter’s trading for the town’s shops.
Kirklees Council hasn’t helped. When did they withdraw the free parking on bank holidays? Once it was free on Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday and Spring Bank Holiday Monday.
So the out-of-town councillors have ruined another holiday for the local traders. Potential customers will all have gone to Meadowhall, the Trafford and White Rose Centres, where parking free, it’s warm and people are friendly.
It’s just another reason for getting rid of Kirklees Council. Do they need the extra money to pay obscene wages to their director figureheads, and top heads of department?
The list in a recent edition of the Examiner made me ashamed to be a resident of the once great town of Huddersfield.
Did anyone understand what jobs they were doing from their job titles? For what they’ve done or not done we could clearly get rid of the regeneration department and town twinning.
Does everyone know we are twinned with three places overseas?
There’s a plaque up Fitzwilliam Street above the church saying Kirklees has been twinned with the French one for more than 50 years. That’s funny, Kirklees wasn’t heard of 50 years ago.
Hazel Spencer
Prospective Kirklees independent, Newsome Ward
We’re in the money
REGARDING the letter from Mark Mercer regarding political funding (Mailbag, March 22) he makes a valid point about money being pumped into the Colne Valley parliamentary seat.
I’d like to know where the Liberal Democrats are getting their cash from.
While the local Tory and his troops have been in my neck of the woods three of four times in as many months, both hand delivering leaflets and knocking on doors, the Liberal Democrats appear to be paying for their leaflets to be delivered – although judging by the half-truths they contain it is hardly surprising they daren’t knock on doors!
This suggests they have few helpers to deliver or have a splurge of cash to pay for it – which begs the question whether some of convicted fraudster Michael Brown’s £2m gift to the Liberal Democrats has been directed into the Colne Valley?
As a footnote I might add that if Michael Brown’s Lib Dems or Gordon Brown’s Unite wish to channel funds into Huddersfield Town’s promotion push I’d be delighted – but at the moment the Tories have my vote!
Andrew Wood
Salendine Nook
No EU mandate
READERS may recall early 2009 when we were undemocratically fully integrated into the EU Union by the Labour government through the signing of the Lisbon Treaty with the unchallenged blessing of the Conservatives.
Between themselves, starting with Ted Heath and the Common Market, they have colluded by signing treaty after treaty to surrender us to it, without a single vote being cast by us.
So, before Mr Kirkhope MEP starts pre-election point-scoring on a 2008 issue (working time directives), he ought to bear in mind that the electorate have not forgotten the main parties’ history on EU politics.
Mr Corcoran
Lockwood
Creating wealth
RECENTLY I was in the audience of a Cameron Direct question time session at Holmfirth.
My conclusion after listening to David Cameron for over an hour was that he has finely tuned these sessions. Although, as usual with all politicians, there was a great deal of rhetoric and aspirations, no applied mechanisms to achieve these goals was forthcoming from Mr Cameron. In this respect, as an example, he talked about the ‘knowledge economy’ where engineers and scientists are so important but where, unfortunately, I have heard all this before since I started voting some 44 years ago from Douglas-Home to Blair – definitely an overwhelming sense of deja vu .
Nothing has changed here and it shows that our political leaders have no idea at all of how to create wealth through British engineers, scientists and technologists. All their feeble attempts (basically just mere words to catch the voters) to date have failed miserably. The state of the British economy can clearly testify to this.
What these so-called clever and intelligent people do not comprehend is what the history of science and technology tells us. That is that over 75% of all the world’s foremost inventions that have created the modern world as we see it today were created by ‘independent’ inventors, not our universities or so-called advanced corporate research centres.
Therefore, if Mr Cameron really thinks he can create a world-beating ‘knowledge economy’, he has to think totally differently to all those who have gone before him and failed appallingly.
That world-changing thinking is to invest in the ‘real’ creative people who have provided basically ground-breaking thinking – the British inventors themselves – and build at least eight ‘people research incubators’ around the UK so that their pre-eminent wealth creator can be unleashed.
Anything else Mr Cameron will simply be fooling himself, just exactly like all the others who have gone before him in the past.
Dr David Hill
Executive Director,World Innovation Foundation Charity
It’s personal
CONGRATULATIONS to the Examiner for refusing to print personal attacks upon political candidates during this election campaign.
However, all the main political parties seem to have no clear idea as to what they are going to do or how they will do it.
With no clear political principles or ideas, politicians cannot argue about policies, only about personalities.
So the coming election seems set to be very personal, bitter and spiteful. Lots of scandals, but no real arguments.
Ray Vickers
Birkby
Priorities straight
IT IS clear from your letters pages that many people in Kirklees are fed up with the priorities of government at national and local levels.
We are being expected to tighten our belts and pay for an economic crisis that we are not responsible for.
The majority of us did not vote for the costly and unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and we were not consulted about the bail-out of the banks.
Most of us would be content to have a job, a decent pension, a roof over our heads, good education and training opportunities for our kids and care when we are sick and elderly.
We all rely on public services. It is our labour that creates wealth, but it is being squandered by governments who choose to suck up to the rich and powerful.
Unison members lobbied Kirklees Council at Huddersfield Town Hall on Budget Day to address the Single Status Deal for council workers.
It is vital that we keep key public sector jobs and services and that Kirklees uses our money wisely to maintain them.
June Jones
Marsden
Out of town
SOME time ago Kirklees Metropolitan Council relented to public pressure and said it would replace the absurd Welcome To Kirklees with Welcome To Huddersfield road signs.
Driving home along Barnsley Road the other day I was irritated to see that this has not been done.
In these cash-starved times, I guess new road signs come well down the ‘to do’ list, behind shovelling asphalt into potholes, planning new and exciting traffic slowing schemes and paying top executives their swanky £100k salaries.
Call me old fashioned, but I still like to think I live in a town called Huddersfield. But I fear that Kirklees has been a recognised geographical entity for quite some time. Huddersfield RIP.
Uncle Kirklees-born-and-bred Grumpy
Golcar
