How Boris Johnson is betraying working class voters – Yorkshire Post Letters

DAVID Skelton writes about the Tories’ “pro-worker policy measures”. They don’t exist (The Yorkshire Post, September 10).

Just throwing words on a page such as “reindustrialisation”, “repairing the dignity of work” and “growth in median wages” without any clues as to how they’ll be delivered doesn’t magic them into existence. Any more than capitalising “levelling up” turns an empty and meaningless slogan into “an agenda”.

How much of the “working class …insecurity and stagnant wages” he talks about can be traced back to the Tories undermining trade unions and workers’ rights from the 1980s onwards? What has the Conservative Party done in the past decade-plus in power to correct this?

Few readers think of themselves “elite”. Many will have voted Remain in 2016 in good faith and continue to oppose Brexit with good reason, with the likelihood of converts from Leave due to all the broken promises and consequences of Boris Johnson’s abysmal and unravelling deal with the European Union.

And yet someone who defends an entitled and incompetent Old Etonian PM thinks he can shame anyone with such honestly held views and concerns about the country’s current course by referring to “the national Remain establishment…metropolitan liberals (and their)...sneering and snobbery”.

Sticks and stones, Mr Skelton. Pot, kettle, black. The insults are thrown around by both sides – then often picked up and given much greater, damaging prominence by the likes of you, Nigel Farage and other worthless reactionaries.

From: Dr Olivier Sykes, Liverpool.

THE failure of ‘Brexit’ to deliver any of its promised benefits is now obvious. Worse still, it is also harming our country in so many ways that it is becoming difficult to keep track.

Only this month we have learned that the Government has given the green light to the dumping of raw sewage into our rivers and the sea. This is a result of companies finding it more difficult to get vital water treatment chemicals as a result of port disruption mainly caused by leaving the EU.

It should be noted, too, that this problem was predicted before we left. As a result, the Environment Agency has allowed companies struggling to get supplies to “discharge effluent without meeting the conditions” of their permits, such as treating water.

As readers of The Yorkshire Post will know, EU regulations and funding have helped to drive environmental improvements, notably the cleaning-up of rivers, coastal waters, and beaches. Leaving the EU now endangers the progress we’ve made in cleaning-up our environment. Many people in these pages have previously noted that “Brexit stinks” for a host of political, ethical, social, and economic reasons – in the case of deregulated raw sewage discharges this is literally the case!

From: David Gray, Liversedge.

YOUR Business Editor (The Yorkshire Post, September 9) suggests that there is a shortage of workers, but then stresses that the unemployment rate is high.

Surely, then, he should be emphasising that the employers looking for staff should be more open about their needs and the training that they are willing to give?

Certainly businesses will be hit by the National Insurance increase, but the reference to the Corporation Tax increase is not in the same context because it is only levied on the surplus of trading after all the other issues have been paid for.

Covid-19 was an outside 
issue and whilst Government 
can be criticised for some actions, we, as the general 
public can be criticised as 
much for our persistent 
attempts to ignore restrictions, wear masks and keep safe distances.

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