April 29 Letters: System’s many flaws come home to roost at election time

From: Philip Smith, New Walk, Beverley.

WHATEVER the result of next month’s General Election, the biggest loser will be democracy. The current system has so many faults - all of which would be easily rectifiable if we had a few statesmen and stateswomen in the political ranks.

For example, we are facing the real threat that the anti-England party, otherwise known as the SNP, will be in a pact with Labour and voting on issues that only affect England and Wales (Tom Richmond, The Yorkshire Post, April 27). That should be illegal and the Tories have done nothing to make it so. They will live to regret that decision.

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Then we have constituency boundaries that clearly favour Labour, the revision of which was scuppered by the Lib Dems during the last Parliament. No principles there then, Nick Clegg.

Then we have an even greater farce. Whatever votes the SNP pick up in Scotland they will have nowhere near the numbers of votes that Ukip will record nationally. However, the SNP will get around 50 seats and Ukip probably fewer than 10.

The current system is obviously totally unfair to all smaller parties. I am hoping they will have the guts to band together and demand their right to be represented according to the ratio of votes cast – like for the European Parliament.

Only full PR and banning Scottish MPs from voting on English matters will sort out these anomalies. The next referendum should be put to the English. Do you want Scotland to remain part of the UK? No is my answer – let’s expel them before they do any more damage through the Barnett Formula. The SNP don’t want Scotland part of England anyway.

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Only Labour has pledged to reform the unelected, unaccountable, over-sized, sleaze-ridden House of Lords.

Don’t even get me started about our hereditary head of state, who should be allowed to retire gracefully and be replaced by someone that we, the people, have elected. Our political system is totally corrupt and once more the election result will be that career politicians will continue to screw the electorate, who will continue to suffer. And they want us to continue to vote for them. Vote Muppet – you will get one anyway!

From: John Watson, Leyburn.

DID you notice that April 23, St George’s Day, passed without a murmur from the media? Whenever our other three neighbours have celebrated the anniversary of their patron Saint we have never been allowed to forget it.