July 3: Why austerity opponents are misguided

THE thing that struck me most about people at recent anti-austerity ralies was their stark message saying bluntly we don’t want to face reality or take responsibility for our own actions. We don’t want to forge our own futures. No way! The world owes us a living and we want it now!

So very sad.

We are told many young people worldwide are disillusioned and angry with what’s on offer, but they must find the will to go out and make things happen, And construct their own futures. Its hard but very satisfying.

The alternative, the easy way, the terrorist way, is to be destructive. The sure road to ruin and despair.

Remember the Devil soon finds work for idle hands and empty heads.

Our Greek friends are encouraged by their new anti-austerity prime minister Alexis Tsipras to continue their already endemic lax monetary policies, believing they can walk on water and that taking responsibility for your own actions is not the way forward. Living beyond your means is to be encouraged. A life on credit is good. So easy, but come the day of reckoning it is 
oh so very painful.

The boring old-fashioned way if you can’t afford it, wait while you can is corny now. Old hat, but your feet were firmly on the ground.

Work hard, pay your bills, love your neighbours, be happy, its the only way. The alternative is unthinkable.

From: D Wood, Howden, East Yorkshire.

I WOULD just like to remark on comments made in your Feedback column (The Yorkshire Post, June 26) by Anthony Smith and Terence Hollingworth. Mr Smith states that Diageo benefits from the UK being in the EU. Diageo are not a British company so they probably will benefit.

British businesses, however, are swamped with stupid diktats and red tape which cost hundreds of millions a year to conform to, so Britain certainly does not benefit from the EU. A British withdrawal would not be a disaster and no jobs would be lost because of it. Mr Smith is also wrong when he states that British businesses want to stay in the EU, they want it greatly reforming or to leave.

Mr Hollingworth states that we would have no say in formulating these diktats (meaning to dictate) he is right but we have no say now either, as diktats are made by unelected faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. Also if he looks carefully he will see that every British objection is overruled. He does however miss the point that only about five per cent of British companies actually trade with the EU, but these diktats apply to 100 per cent of our businesses. The whole loss of trade and jobs thing is nothing but a myth mere propaganda spread by the Europhiles to try and frighten us into staying in this German dictatorship.

We are currently running a cumalitive trade deficit of almost £400bn with the EU. They will noy want to refuse that kind of trade.

From: Ian Oglesby, High Catton Road, Stamford Bridge.

AT the wind-up of the recent G7 conference, President Obama welcomed the enlargement of the EU. This reminds us of the Blair-Bush folly over Iraq.

Regardless of the consequences, the EU has enticed countries with weak economies bordering Russia. The conflict in Ukraine is a result and there are rumblings bordering the Baltic. This time, we must stand apart as conflict deepens.

Same-sex absurdity

From: Frank McManus, Longfield Road, Todmorden.

SEEING the new film version of Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd sent me back to look at his novel of that title, and I was intrigued to find that his final chapter uses the term “gay wedding” in the context of Bathsheba and Gabriel.

As one who regrets that the oxymoron-term “same-sex marriage” has spread like wildfire through the Western world in a “common deluge drowning old political common-sense” (Tennyson) I can but summarise the case against its absurdity: to claim that a sworn same-sex friendship is equal to matrimony is like equating a mule to a mare. In each case only the latter can produce a stable community.

Unwise link to military

From: Dai Woosnam, Grimsby.

I WATCHED eight of our dead from Tunisia being given a solemn military reception at RAF Brize Norton. In one respect, quite right too: their lives are every bit as valuable as those of our fallen warriors. But I wonder if it is wise?

For if these eight tourists had been killed in a bus crash, there is no way that this would be happening. Instead the bodies would be repatriated outside the public gaze, in a commercial airport. But the sad thing now is that these crazed terrorists and wannabe terrorists, will see British tourists as inextricably linked with the military... and thus, fair game.

From: Iain Morris, Caroline Street, Bradford.

WHY should mature women with children wish to condone the behaviour of an organisation like ISIS which enjoys cutting the heads off captives who do not see life through the same prism as themselves?