People power can end this Scottish unfairness

HOW wholeheartedly I agreed with Sir Bernard Ingham’s excellent article “Apathetic English must do more than grumble at Scots funding unfairness” (Yorkshire Post, September 14).

To learn that it is only English students who have to pay £9,000 per year to attend a four-year course at a Scottish university, when European students enjoy the same free tuition as the Scots, adds insult to injury. It is unbelievable that the Scots can be so punitive and ungrateful as to bite the hand which feeds them.

Having now got our backs firmly up against the wall, it is time that we “pathetically passive English”, as Sir Bernard calls us, cast off our inertia and explode into action.

Most of the people I speak to grumble about what is going on today. However, the conversation nearly always ends with: “But we can’t do anything about it.”

Can’t we? Are we unable to write letters to the Prime Minister, to our MP or to the press?

Recently, I visited my bank with my paying-in and withdrawal forms having been dutifully completed at home. The pleasant young man behind the counter told me that the system had changed again and that forms were no longer required. “Oh!” said I, “does that mean that people didn’t like the new system?” He smiled sheepishly and agreed. Top marks, I thought, to the determined customers of this bank.

Manifold complaints, followed by government intervention, have resulted in the retention of our cheque books for the foreseeable future.

And Sainsbury’s, who opened a giant new store in Wakefield’s £210m Trinity Walk in May, now intend to re-open their old store on Ings Road. Why? Because their customers didn’t like the mega store and voted with their feet.

We should never under-estimate the power each one of us possesses when we act together. Age is no handicap, neither is it any excuse for sitting back and ignoring what needs to be done.