Can the Tory agenda win over North?

YOUR columnist Tom Richmond (The Yorkshire Post, November 4) wrote that it was a shame that prominent Conservatives from West and South Yorkshire, such as Justine Greening and Eric Pickles, had to leave their home districts to seek election in more traditionally Conservative supporting areas.

The same also seems to be the case, in reverse, with prominent Labour MPs, such as Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Rachel Reeves who all moved to Yorkshire from much further south to secure a seat.

Unfortunately, Labour support can, in some areas, seem to be handed down from generation to generation, with little thought appearing to be given as to whether the voter agrees with Labour’s current policies.

Being born in Dewsbury, and having lived most of my life in Wakefield, I strongly believe that the traditional Conservative message of aspiration and opportunity is how we continue to bring prosperity and security back to our great Northern 
cities.

As a prospective Conservative MP for Leeds, I am determined to ensure that, to use your phrase, this agenda is given a fair hearing.

After all, the alternative is that the country becomes ever more reliant on the South East for its financial security and in so doing removes aspiration and opportunity from young people today and in the future, leading to a divided and resentful country.

From: Charles Lawson, Halifax Road, Brighouse.

WILLIAM Snowden (The Yorkshire Post, October 11) mentioned the winter of discontent but not the summer of discontent in the same year 1979.

Margaret Thatcher came to power in May 1979. Eight million days were lost from January to April but 21 million days were lost from May to December.

He claims that Britain was beset with hyper-inflation and mass unemployment under Labour but he then praises Mrs Thatcher.

The facts are that inflation more than doubled under her to 26 per cebt helped by the “low tax Tories” increasing VAT from an average of 8.4 per cent to 15 per cent.

As he claimed that there was mass unemployment under Labour when the figure was one million, how would he describe it when it soared to 3.2 million (this figure was after the Tories had fiddled the figures on 28 occasions)?

The family silver like British Gas and BT were sold of to give massive tax cuts to the wealthy while the total tax burden and national debt rose.

These are facts that Tories like to forget.

From: Allen Atkinson, Bingley.

MARGARET Thatcher was elected in 1979 after a advertising campaign which showed a line of unemployed people with the strapline “Labour isn’t working”. Unemployment is 1.25 million.

Within five years, her policies had increased that to 2.5 million. Indeed the peak was even higher. She increased the unemployment figures to such a level that perhaps an apology would have been in order.

The country is still paying the price of the social upheaval under her premiership. Billions of pounds in North Sea oil revenue went on paying people on the dole. Rupert Murdoch was given special treatment.

Fast forward to David “we are all in it together” Cameron. First he gives a £40k a year pay increase by way of tax cuts to people who earn six or even a hundred times more than the wage needed to live and then cuts benefits paid to people earning barely enough to live on.

If you give money to people who spend it day to day and who do not just stick it in the bank, it boosts the economy.

By the way, what does not help the situation now is having a Labour leader who is, as they say, “low voltage”. Yes, we got the wrong Miliband.

Princess Camilla?

From: Diana Priestley, Youlgrave, Bakewell.

YOU printed a lovely picture of Prince Charles and Camilla at the funeral of Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire (The Yorkshire Post, October 3).

It was captioned “The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall”. When is someone going to make this charming lady Princess of Wales? She is the wife of the Prince of Wales, and has achieved a great deal since their marriage in turning him from a rather gauche and unsettled man into someone and relaxed and comfortable in his own skin.

If he is ever to be King, she must surely be at his side as Queen. It is time to prepare for this by making her a princess.

Raise a glass to the best

From: Dick Appleyard, Saxilby, Near Lincoln.

WITH reference to the letters from Hilary Andrews and Ruth Pickles (The Yorkshire Post, October 6) I can’t think of who the best Yorkshireman is.

However, a second definition of the word “Yorkshireman” is a jocular term for “a fly drowning or which has drowned in a glass of ale”. This description is from The Yorkshire Dictionary of Dialect, Tradition and Folklore by Arnold Kellett.

From: GK Denton, Willerby.

My nomination for the title of greatest living Yorkshireman is not a self-opinionated sportsman but a man who without publicity quietly gets on with his job of saving people’s lives – a surgeon.