Blame the bankers, not the unions

MIKE Smith’s memory is at fault (“Remember 30 years before Thatcher”, Yorkshire Post, August 29).

The period immediately before the election of the Thatcher regime was memorable for the progress made by ordinary working people, with an abundance of jobs, security at the workplace and a dramatic increase in the purchase of homes, with few repossessions. Most children’s lives improved beyond that of their parents.

It was also a much happier society. Ask any person over the age of 60 if they feel that they enjoyed a better lifestyle than the generation which followed them and the answer generally will be that they do not envy today’s youngsters who struggle to find jobs, are worried that when they are in work that they will be made redundant or suffer loss of earnings.

Margaret Thatcher hated trade unions and trade unionists – remember her reference to “the traitors in our midst?” Her first task when elected was to destroy the organisations which protected workers. Aided by the Tory Press, which she encouraged to demonise trade union officials and their members, she introduced legislation to weaken the only strength workers possessed, their trade unions.

Mrs Thatcher also destroyed the country’s industries and gambled the future of the country on the City of London and its avaricious bankers.

This silly policy resulted in the economic mess we are now in. She deregulated the financial sector and allowed the free for all which rewarded the few and penalised the majority.

Fred Goodwin and his cronies, greedy for unearned salaries and bonuses, did more damage to the country in a few short years than Arthur Scargill, Jack Jones and “Red Robbo” could have done in several lifetimes.

From: Ken Abson, Huddersfield.

WHY, Sir Bernard Ingham, (Yorkshire Post, August 29) do we assume that all analysts, economists and people who seek to make important decisions, exhibit this vague ability called “common sense”?

There is no such thing in any field of work/study/prediction. It is simply the application of previous experiences. Without this background, it is impossible to come to serious decisions in any walk of life that has meaningful validity to the rest of society.

As a retired lecturer in engineering, I always stressed that my experiences were different to those of my students, and as such, a subject which seemed ‘common sense’ to me could be completely ‘foreign’ to others, and vice versa.

Please stop making the assumption, Bernard, that it is a necessary gift in all jobs- it does not exist without the benefit of years of experience.

Sustained pressure

From: DM Loxley, Pinewood View, Hartoft, Pickering.

IT is only in the past few days that I have read the article “Dockside power plant plans submitted” (Yorkshire Post, August 1).

Sue Jolliffe is quoted as saying: “It depends on the definition of sustainable sources.” I agree, but it also depends on much more. It is stated to produce 49MW (electricity) plus heat infers the use of “pass-out” turbines; be capable of supplying 95,000 “homes”, and cut carbon emissions by 190,000 tonnes a year.

If one uses the local (Yorkshire and Humberside) average domestic consumption of 3,860 KW.hr, from the Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics (DUKES) the plant will have to operate at an annual utility factor of 85(+) per cent. This is unheard of for that kind of plant.

I also wonder how the company is going to get 475,000 tonnes of dry timer every year into the site. Just how do they propose to demonstrate the audit ability of the supply chain of the timber to be able to claim the “saving” of 190,000 tonnes per year of carbon emissions?

Just idle curiosity, you understand.

Lottery aid
for Olympics

From: N Slight, Cyprus Grove, Haxby, York.

WITH reference to your front page headlines about the lottery (Yorkshire Post, August 25), I am delighted I stopped buying my two weekly lottery tickets.

I stopped buying them when, seven years ago, it was announced that London had won the right to stage the 2012 Olympic Games. I knew then that a lot of lottery money would be used to fund them, as happened with Tony Blair’s Millennium Dome.

When Tessa Jowell said these are the London Games and all will take place in London, my thoughts were let London pay for them and have not bought a ticket since.

Instead, I subscribe to four Yorkshire-based lotteries as I know the money will be used locally.

My wife and I went to the Munich Games in 1972 which didn’t have so much hype as London and we enjoyed them very much.

The bare essentials

From: Dennis Whitaker, Baildon, Shipley.

ONE is entitled to question the ineptitude and wit of a government which donates in excess of £44m daily to an undemocratic and unaccountable EU and one 
is entitled, privately, to 
question the wit of a Prince 
who emulates the King in the Altogether from Hans Christian Andersen, but which of these 
two subjects ought, more properly, to raise the concern of the public at large?