Labour should stop ‘playing politics’ over virus and jobs – Yorkshire Post Letters

I READ with interest your recent article about business grants being returned to the Government with comments from Ed Miliband, Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary.

I’m sure readers will view comments by Mr Miliband with a degree of caution. To be clear, these government grants were given to help local businesses when the national lockdown began. The scheme was administered by councils. These grants were not meant to shore up a council’s own budget, so Mr Miliband’s suggestion that councils are being left to “sink or swim” is incorrect and unhelpful.

Let’s take Leeds City Council – it received £162m in statutory grants to be dispersed under specific criteria to businesses. Of that, £8m remains unspent.

What councils should be doing now is joining me in requesting that the Government allows us to keep the underspend on both funds on the strict condition that it is used for the purposes intended, and in particular targeted on help for the hospitality industry.

Once again I’m afraid some opponents of the Government seem only to want to play politics – and this is most unfortunate.

From: Mr RGN Webb, The Grove, Hipperholme.

AS Covid-19 shines a very harsh light on the UK, commentators are asserting that the ‘local lockdown isn’t working’. Perhaps they could consider that without it, infection might be higher still. Also, do people actually comply with it?

The virus thrives on social proximity so obviously our observance of social distancing is inadequate. In densely populated inner urban residential areas, often with multi-generational occupancy, transmission is difficult to curb even with vigilance – and we should sympathise.

However significant amounts of our recreational socialising is anti-social, involving drug abuse and alcohol consumption to the point of drunk and disorderly.

For non-compliance with social distancing, it is to these groupings we should be looking – added to protest marches, celebrating football fans and massed numbers of beach visitors. What is the Government doing? What are we doing? Where is the discipline and personal responsibility?

From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Leeds.

WOULDN’T it be better if all MPs got together (The Yorkshire Post, October 15 and 16)? By constantly denigrating everything the Government has tried to do to stem the tide of spread of this horrific virus, the Opposition parties have caused confusion in the public who now are rebellious against any measures recommended.

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

I THOUGHT I was a normal intelligent chap but I am puzzled by all the different government instructions regarding the pandemic. Too many so-called experts are advising Boris Johnson. He should listen to all, then make his own decisions. The whole mess will be with us for some time.

From: Ken Cooke, Ilkley.

IT is hard to understand why Ron Firth (The Yorkshire Post, October 14) thinks ‘blame’ prevents jobs getting done by this government which has a whacking majority and acts more and more like a dictatorship. Does he simply want to divert our attention from its incompetence – as in its ‘oven-ready’ Brexit deal and the failure of its test and trace system?

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Thank you

James Mitchinson