Bleak legacy of Labour deficit deniers

Britain is to help bail out Portugal from its debt crisis (Yorkshire Post, April 9) due to the UK’s double commitment of being a willing member of the International Monetary Fund and a reluctant member of the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism.

The latter commitment was enforced on the UK by the departing Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, during the brief interregnum after Labour’s General Election defeat and the start of the present coalition Government – clearly a petulant move to potentially exacerbate the dire finances of the country by the rejected socialists.

That final act illustrates Labour as a party prepared to sacrifice the country for their own political advantage and make the UK recovery extra difficult.

The international financial crash started in August 2008. As Parliament re-assembled that autumn, the Labour Treasury team brought unwise plans to the House to expand borrowing, saying they would cushion the impending recession and save jobs.

In truth, they meant, “buy votes”, and proceeded to do so particularly in the area of public sector jobs by expanding the government’s staff above six million employees.

To achieve this, Labour began borrowing 25 per cent of all expenditure to fuel the bloated national wage bill. It was very unfortunate for the country that Labour had 21 months before the general election to plunge the nation into a record peacetime deficit.

Thank goodness we voted them out, can you imagine the nightmare of the deficit deniers continuing in office?

From: Mrs BJ Cussons, Curly Hill, Ilkley.

CAN someone please explain why we should prop up Portugal? The Portugese people are fighting against making necessary cuts while we recognise that we must do so or our interest on debts alone will be impossible, much less repayments. We don’t live in cloud cuckoo land.

As a regular visitor to Madeira, fond as I am of the people and the country, I have been astounded at the amount of European money that has been ploughed into it. Apart from the millions that must have gone on roads every tiny business is of the highest standard.

Yes much is due to the hard work and pride of the people but the modern high standards (including energy saving lighting and water taps) must have been boosted by the money from Europe given, apparently, due to their dependence on tourism.

Taxi drivers used to thank us for the money “we” had spent on their roads.

What worries me now is that despite the parlous position of many of Europe’s member countries further extensive road expansion networks are still being built. Who is paying now?

Taxation by stealth

From: GR Thorpe, Lister Avenue, East Bowling, Bradford.

I SEE that we have Ed Balls complaining that the coalition Government is hitting middle England financially hard (Yorkshire Post, April 4).

Mr Balls seems to have a very short memory. If my memory serves me correctly, the Labour Party took billions of pounds from private pension funds and introduced dozens of stealth taxes.

Would the Shadow Chancellor be kind enough to explain which part of the population suffered from these taxes if it was not middle England?

Britain paid penalty for war

From: Margaret Claxton, Arden Court, Northallerton.

I TOTALLY agree with Mrs Betty Marsden (Yorkshire Post, April 11) on the way some countries did better than others out of the Second World War, and would just like to make one point.

When war broke out, the US was on its beam ends at the end of the worst Depression ever known.

It was the providing of arms to the Allies that made it prosperous again and they took our money until we had none left, then went on to lease-lend.

Then at the end of the war in one of the dirtiest tricks ever, at Yalta, Roosevelt and Stalin proceeded to carve up the winnings between them, totally ignoring Churchill.

We were paying for it for years after. I did not meet my husband until we were both demobbed.

My second child was born in 1952 and she had a ration book. That’s how well we did out of the war.

From: John Gordon, Whitcliffe Lane, Ripon.

After reading the letter about Germany’s rise to prosperity, it occurred to me that after the Second World War Germany spent less on smaller wars whereas Britain went straight into the Korean war (I was in it) and has never failed to spend a huge amount on offensive campaigns: Suez, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, you name it, we were there.

It’s policing the world that costs money.

From: John Halkon, Hermitage Court Richmond.

I WAS interested to read the views of Keith Hartley (Yorkshire Post, April 12) on the capabilities of our Armed Forces following the Defence Review 2010.

These decisions may be correct at this moment in time based on known factors, but who can predict with the turmoil now within the Middle East what our defensive requirements will be even next year.

As one of the world’s policemen, we are likely to be involved, as events unfold, for years to come.