July 13: Years of cuts make paying living wage to carers impossible

From: Mike Padgham, Chair, Independent Care Group (York and North Yorkshire), Eastfield House, Eastway, Eastfield, Scarborough.

ON the face of it, the introduction of the new National Living Wage is a positive step towards properly rewarding social care workers for their hard work in looking after the country’s most vulnerable adults.

However, more than £4.6bn has been cut from local authority budgets since 2010-11, with further cuts of £1.1bn ahead, and councils have been cutting their investment in social care and squeezing providers.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Unless the Government and local authorities commit to investing more into social care and paying providers properly, it is difficult to see how they will be able to pay this new, increased wage, however much they might want to.

From: Don Burslam, Elm Road, Dewsbury Moor, Dewsbury.

LONDON is never out of the news. The trouble is that it is less and less a nice place to live and work and more and more a showcase for tourists, an assortment of imposing if crumbling edifices and even a hotbed of crime and money laundering.

The continual obsession with expanding air services typifies this concentration with the affairs of the capital. Why should it concern us? Because part of our taxes are siphoned off to service this monstrous engine down south. Boris Johnson and co are experts at banging the big drum, but perhaps it is time to say enough is enough. Let us call a halt to this mindless expansion and if people are determined on flying to faraway places, they can fly from the continent.

Ah yes, but what about the City? Much of the apparent financial success of the capital and the millions made by a few are based on ridiculous house prices and inordinate speculation of one sort or another True there is some movement away from the centre but it is too little and too late. It is time for a more balanced approach to the economy.

From: Malcolm Wright, Harrogate.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

I FANCY that there were no gasps of disbelief at the discovery of the UK energy rip-off (The Yorkshire Post, July 8). Will there be sighs of relief at the news that “Ministers will consider its provisional findings” and then ignore them or continue bleating “change your supplier”? I’m one of thousands who have never considered switching because confusing tariffs convinced me that my “choice” would be between frying pan and fire.