Brown’s record more impressive than opponents will admit

From: JW Smith, Sutton-on-Sea.

ALAN Chapman (Yorkshire Post, May 3) confesses unashamedly to be a fan of Bernard Ingham, a man whose myopic adulation for Mrs Thatcher never allowed him to admit she got anything wrong and never to agree that Gordon Brown did anything right.

In case he has forgotten, Gordon Brown was not the first Prime Minister to take office without being elected, the previous one being John Major, but he ought to know the Prime Minister is never elected. Usually, although not necessarily, the leader of a party is invited by the Monarch to form a government. He mentions Socialist dream projects, so may I remind him of a few of Gordon Brown’s “mistakes”. Removing outside toilets at schools, building new and refurbishing many decaying classrooms, refurbishing practically every accident and emergency department, building new and refurbishing many hospitals, stopping hospital doctors from working 70 or 80 hours per week, increasing the numbers of doctors and nurses, bringing a halt to patients dying on hospital trolleys and reducing the time spent on waiting lists.

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Twice in recent years, I have been referred to two consultants; I saw the first one three working days after visiting my GP; the second eight days after the GP, because he now makes a weekly visit to our local surgery. We also now have a two-dentist NHS practice in our surgery.

There was also a substantial increase in police numbers, bus services restored to thousands of miles of rural areas, a minimum wage introduced at a time when many employees were being paid around £1-£1.50 per hour. The railways were saved from oblivion brought about by privatisation and the profit-led disaster that was Railtrack.

Finally, Mr Chapman derides the educational qualifications of Mr Brown for the posts held in government, but I wonder how the qualifications of the present front bench stack up? I am not an advocate for Gordon Brown to get the IMF job, but it seems to me that, contrary to the opinions of influential people in this country, many international financiers are.

From: David Downs, Sandal, Wakefield.

THE withdrawal of electoral support for the Liberal Democrats is beyond belief and sums up the intelligence of some of our university students, academics, civil servants and their like.

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Can’t they see that the Lib Dems have far more influence than the membership could ever have imagined prior to the last general election? All of us had our wish lists: free further education, better pensions for all, better care for the vulnerable.

Nick Clegg and his colleagues should be applauded in this respect. When getting into power, they found that the economy could not afford their measures; they had to compromise and put the interests of the country at large before that of party politics.

The Lib Dem defectors would have been better kicking the Labour Party into touch. It was they who sold our gold reserves and borrowed beyond the country’s means.