Act now over social care crisis please - Yorkshire Post letters

TWO recent Panorama programmes highlighted the crisis in social care. The shameful state of affairs in Somerset is replicated in North Yorkshire.

Here too, dementia patients are being forced to sell their homes to try and meet their care costs.

A direct challenge to Tory PM hopefuls over social care and dignitiy of ‘greatest generation’ – The Yorkshire Post says

The 2017 general election proved that ordinary voters are not exclusively concerned about Brexit.

Independent government advisers resorted to an open letter to express despair at the failure of this administration and its predecessors to tackle the funding of social care.

We hear promises of tax cuts from Tory leadership hopefuls: who will champion the needs of the desperate?

Whether a potential PM has taken drugs is a diverting irrelevancy.

The crisis in care has already blighted the last years and months of thousands of people.

Without urgent, radical and courageous reform, a similar fate awaits our loved ones. And ourselves.

Misplaced sympathy

From: DS Roberts, Almondbury, Huddersfield.

WHY all this sympathy for tax dodgers?

The loan scheme (The Yorkshire Post, June 18) was marketed as a sophisticated tax and (probably) National Insurance avoidance arrangement and the participants were well aware of its tax advantages when they agreed to join.

It is, in effect, a disguised remunerated employment scheme and as such should have been disclosed on individual tax returns.

They are complaining now that they cannot pay the back tax that has been avoided because they have spent the amount they saved.

It beggars belief that some Labour MPs are demanding that HMRC drop their claims for back tax.

Times have certainly changed when socialists condone tax avoidance.

HMRC should recover all the tax that has been avoided, either from the participants or their employer or the promoters of the scheme.

I am charged tax on my pension, so why should other people not pay their fair share?

Trump is no democrat

From: Caroline Feeman, Bowling Green, Ohio, USA.

MR PL Taylor’s letter ‘We should back Trump’ (The Yorkshire Post, June 20) echoed the article in the June 4 edition by Andrew Vine ‘Protesters should grow up’.

I strongly disagree. Mr Vine seems unaware that peaceful protesting is free speech in action, or, in the US, practising the First Amendment.

When Vice President Mike Pence attended a production of Hamilton with his family, he was booed by some of the audience and this upset his children.

Mr Pence explained ‘that is the sound of free speech’. I 
don’t agree with his policies but I give him credit for that explanation.

The protesters in London, which President Trump encountered, were protesting because this is a man representing a democratic country but many of his policies and behaviours have been extraordinarily undemocratic – far from being the ‘bastion of support’ for democracy that Mr Taylor supports.

The UK has a monarch who is necessarily above politics and, as such, can carry out ceremonial duties which are important aspects of friendly relationships.

Missing point on TV licence

From: Keith Sturdy, Grimbald Road, Knaresborough.

MAY I thank Stephen Oliver for his letter (The Yorkshire Post, June 20) in response to my letter published (June 17) on the subject of TV licences for the over-75s.

I think he misses my point to some degree, I have not said that I would not take advantage of this concession if it were available to me, nor have I said that it should not continue for people already benefiting from this.

My point is how are these benefits and other similar benefits he mentions in his letter derived, is an age just picked out of thin air?

I left school at 15 years and worked until my late 60s paying income tax throughout this time and am still paying large amounts of income tax and council tax in retirement, so I regard these benefits as payback time and take full advantage of them.

It would seem Mr Oliver and I are to some degree singing from the same hymn sheet after all. I fully agree with his comments regarding the BBC. Since writing my original letter, I have found that the over-75s concession was introduced by the Labour Party in 2000, obviously another Blair / Brown bribe!

Memories of my police van

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

READING the article by David Behrens (The Yorkshire Post, June 19) brought back memories. From 1957-64, I was a dog handler with the East Riding Police.

My colleague and I covered the whole of the old East Riding from Filey to Spurn Point and from Malton to Howden.

Our transport for the first four years was a Bradford Jowett van. It had two cylinders producing 8hp. It was no speedster, but very reliable. I travelled to dog trials in Brighton in it.

The seat was basic so the original was swapped for one from a scrap yard. My colleague crashed it and it was replaced 
by a Ford Thames van. Happy days.