Fall in shares shows failure by Labour

IF anyone has any doubts about the dreadful mismanagement of the UK by the last Labour government in not keeping their eye on the financial ball, my wife fully enlightened me a little last week.

After receiving the Halifax Building Society shares as a right as a member when they de-mutualised and where in 2007 these minimum share allocations were worth about £4,000, today those very same equivalent shares are valued, she tells me, at less than £200. Indeed, £4,000 four years ago accounting for inflation would be worth the equivalent of £4,800 today valued in purchasing power terms.

Therefore, like millions of former Halifax shareholders, she has lost about £4,600 or, in other words, 96 per cent of their former value. It is no good Labour stating that it was out of their hands as in 2003 Alan Greenspan told the world that if matters were not reined in within the financial world, a meltdown would be the outcome.

Was Gordon Brown deaf or did he choose not to take heed of the world’s most powerful central banker at the time and some five years before the financial collapse actually happened?

Train contract must stay here

From: D Wood, Goole.

ALMOST daily we read of another good reason to leave the EU. I was incensed to read the report (Yorkshire Post, July 5) on the order for 1,200 railway coaches that has gone to a German firm instead of one in Britain, and that this was done on the instructions of an EU directive.

How come French trains can be built in France, and German trains can be built in Germany, but we are not allowed to build our trains in Britain? The grossly ineffective Business Secretary Vince Cable then stated that we had no option under EU law but to obey the directive. Here then, Mr Cable are three very easy options:

Ignore the EU directive like the French and Germans, and give the order to Bombardier.

Ignore and don’t pay any fine imposed, like the French.

Withdraw from the EU.

We must be the only country in the world that allows foreigners to destroy our industries and pays them billions of pounds for doing it. If this contract is not given to the British plant it will put at the very least 1,400 skilled workers out of a job. When are the fools we allow to govern us going to wake up and put a stop to this madness?

Report needed on aid money

From: Jack Kinsman, Stainton Drive, Grimsby.

EVERY day we see the pictures of the faces of starving people of Africa. Where is the aid that is sent to this continent year in and year out? We are talking billions of pounds over the years.

What is needed now is good undercover reporters to show us where the money that is meant for the poor and starving of Africa, and other aided countries, goes to.

If good reporting showed in detail what the British public already know, then maybe our stupid Government would stop sending money and start sending things like de-salination equipment and solar panels to operate electrical power. But first we need the good reporting of good newspapers to uncover the misuse of the aid money that is sent to these countries.

We need good reporters to show the world where our money is going.

New breed of women

From: Max Nottingham, St Faith’s Street, Lincoln.

THERE is a new breed of woman about, let’s call them professional women or career women (they are usually Tories). They have been a growth section in society for the last 20 years at least.

They are, on their own admission, “career first” women; and have a “we want it all” attitude.

Being the youngest of 13 in a working-class family I did not encounter the career woman until I was well into my adulthood. Truth to tell, they came as a shock to my system. No more feminine woman.

It was the new breed built with attitude, aggression and shoulders like an American football star.

I am still adjusting to these women with men’s attitude to life; and their families taking a new found place in the pecking order. Is the change good or bad? I prefer to say at this stage it is just a comparatively new reality. A newish breed of woman. Men watch out; there is change about.

Vital work of trade unions

From: W Brown, Teeside.

REFERENCE Sir Bernard Ingham’s article (Yorkshire Post, July 6) where he questions what unions do for members and the support for the recent union day of action over pensions cannot go without comment.

Unions still play a vital role protecting their members and also non-union members from dictatorial management imposing change without consultation or negotiation. Unions at a local level have vast experience of representing members in disciplinary and performance and employment contract matters as well as welfare and health and safety issues.

Sir Bernard has forgotten last year the CPS union won a landmark legal victory in the High Court that the changes being imposed by Government to civil servants redundancy and resettlement arrangements, originally agreed by Margaret Thatcher and deemed fair by her, could not be imposed without agreement and negotiation with the appropriate unions.

As far as support for the recent strike, it would appear from the TV news broadcasts I saw, that it was well supported nationwide. In the North-East, the majority supported the strike, indeed some of the workers crossing picket lines were staff who had already lost their full-time jobs to outsourcing in the Far East, and were now on temporary part-time contracts and were terrified of losing that meagre income.