Labour created the mess they are complaining about today

From: Derek Cartwright, Manor Farm Drive, Batley.

I READ your Saturday front page with interest (Yorkshire Post, July 23). Before Labour left power, they recklessly increased public sector employment by 300,000, knowing that the finance sector’s taxes were no longer going to be there to pay for the jobs.

Labour paid no attention to how their policies of increasing public sector employment based on finance sector taxes and falling manufacturing employment was changing the structure of the economy. They were reckless with the economy, as anyone who worked in manufacturing would surely have said.

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So how reckless has this Government been so far? Public sector employment decreased by 24,000 (seasonally adjusted) in the first quarter of 2011 to 6.162 million. That’s only 0.39 per cent.

Employment in local government decreased by 27,000 and employment in public corporations decreased by 1,000.

Central government employment increased by 4,000. The number of employees in the Civil Service increased by 7,000 from the previous quarter to 513,000.

I am deeply concerned that £150m has been spent on lay-offs, but not in the sense that the Yorkshire Post implied because that is £23.076, but look at Kirklees and the figure is only £11,648 which may go nowhere in regards to the time people may be out of work.

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What one needs here is a mode average. Indeed, many of these people may never work again, as they may not have skills required by the private sector.

Even so, the scale of your reported cuts are nothing compared to what was imposed on the manufacturing sector.

Labour’s new spin is to say the Government is reckless. It was the last government that made the mess by increasing state employment, Labour is acting as if it was never in power, as if it did not create the mess and as if they were not reckless.

Labour increased public sector employment so that state employees would have a vested interest in putting it back into power.

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So the too fast and too deep cuts have hardly started yet. When would Labour have them start?

If this is fast, Labour would not be running a four minute mile, but one in slow motion. We have a long way to go to re-structure employment to create a sustainable economy.

From: George Appleby, Clifton, York.

DAVID Cameron calls them the “doers and grafters”, Ed Miliband dubs them the “squeezed middle”, while for Nick Clegg they are “alarm-clock Britain”.

The Resolution Foundation Independent study group, which plots life for millions of lower to medium earners (all those on between £12,000 to £48,500), found that only £10 from every £100 of national GDP goes to their wages, taking bonuses into account.

The bottom half of earners only get £10.

About £14 goes to the top 10 per cent, and £5 to the privileged 1 per cent at the top.

Present government policies are making these growing divisions in our society even greater