Monday's Letters: We don't want Europe to go away, we want to leave the EU

NOW we are to provide £7bn to bail out the Irish (Yorkshire Post, November 20). While I like the Irish, I cannot agree to bailing them out. A number of reasons are given for this help. We would lose trade with Ireland, but this is only a tiny amount of our trade, and would make little difference assuming it did stop.

Another excuse is that RBS and Lloyds, who have lent billions to the Irish, would go bust. Again, this would be no bad thing – here we have two banks which have been so badly run that they have had to be bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of 70bn and yet the fat cats who run them are still arrogant enough to pay themselves huge bonuses.

Of course the real reason – despite Michael McGowan's attempt to say otherwise (Yorkshire Post, November 23) – is that with Spain, Portugal and Italy teetering on the brink of collapse, the euro is in danger of failing. This is a currency which its backers have used to the utmost to undermine the pound, and not a single penny of our money should be used to save this Mickey Mouse currency.

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In this article, Mr McGowan tries very unconvincingly to exonerate the euro and the EU from any blame in Ireland's problems. There is no mention of the euro's imposed interest rate which caused the Irish economy to greatly overheat. Nor the fact that the EU poured billions of pounds –- mostly provided by the British taxpayer – into what was basically a small agricultural economy, thus creating an unsustainable housing bubble.

The problem was greatly increased when, due to spreading its tentacles into Eastern Europe, the EU had to reduce its bribes to the Irish in order to bribe the new eastern European members.

Mr McGowan states that Europe will not go away. We don't want it to, we want to leave the EU –- which is not Europe.

It must tell us something about our membership of the EU when the two richest countries in Europe, namely Switzerland and Norway, are not members. They trade with whoever they like and make all their own laws without outside interference, let us join them.

From: D Wood, Thorntree Lane, Goole.

****

From: T Carlile, Park Avenue, Shelley Park, Huddersfield.

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IT'S quite shameful of the BBC to relegate the plight of the miners in New Zealand to the bottom of the bulletin in favour of the Irish mess.

Yet again, we are dishing out huge sums of money which could and should be used in this country. 7bn could buy a lot of hospitals andhelp pensioners. Let the big bank involved sort itself out – the import-export business is a sideline excuse.

Although I am a Conservative, it is time Mr Osborne got into the real world and stopped people using Britain as a cash machine. Has he never heard of the phrase "Charity begins at home?"

Free thinkers with a legacy of wreckage

From: Roger Crossley, Fall View, Silkstone, Barnsley.

GOOD for Richard Heller. It is about time that someone spoke up about the failures of the 1960s. His diatribe in his article (Yorkshire Post, November 20) was exhausting, but he is right to call to account the ineptitudes of that era.

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At that time, but I would argue even more so in the 1970s, the media, unions and education, were dominated by left wing pseudo intellectuals whose philosophies were usually fuelled by an unpleasant undercurrent of intimidation, which suffocated discussion and rationality.

Embedded in these areas were people who saw themselves as always right, and for millions of people at that time, it was safer and more comfortable to appear to be with them than against them, as is the demand of all bullies.

And where are they now, these radical free thinkers for the people? They're mostly tucked up in their cosy middle class lives, having walked away from the responsibility for, and wreckage caused by them during that time. They will be living lives now that they mocked and derided in their youth, and won't even recognise, even less, understand or admit their culpability.

From: Kendal Wilson, Wharfebank Terrace, Tadcaster.

I WOULD like to comment upon the recent article by Richard Heller in which he explained how this generation will be left to mop up the mess his generation had created, I would concur with his viewpoint from the 1960s onwards, steered largely by the emerging property culture.

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This generation has been fattening themselves up for 40 years or more, creating unrealistic precedents and expectations, creating an economy based on property while good sustainable industry gradually disappeared and will probably never return.

The banks, in collusion with the property adventurers, are happy to let more money go to these people and will probably end up owning most of it as property stagnates and people are forced somehow to become more realistic.

The big losers are the young. What were their parents thinking of?

This viewpoint is hypothetical, but very often the profit that has been made from improvements outstrips the incremental level of investment, so we also have in this country development on many spaces where there was green land. There are houses that will probably have to be taken over by housing associations and re-labelled pseudo second homes at 80 per cent of the market rent.

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Finally, the people Richard Heller talks about occupy every committee, most political vacancies, many charities and, if one cares to look deep enough, it is not the promotion of their cause at heart; I have a sneaky feeling it is self-aggrandisement and protection. Why would t

hey let the desperate hordes walk all over their very lucky generation?

Politicians' pomposity

From: T Scaife, Manor Drive, York.

BRAVADO, that foolish mask worn often too wearily. Stiff upper lip and all that in the face of austerity, for example. Thatcherite Lord Young might well comment that everything is hunky dory; things aren't as bad as you imagine (Yorkshire Post, November 20).

According to this multi-millionaire we've never had it so good, and people who complain most expect the state to support them. Supported by the state at 300 a day to attend the House of Lords, Lord Young's bravado is hollow, because he won't personally experience the recession.

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His ignorance and lack of empathy about unemployment illustrates how foolish he and the Con Dems' regressive austerity policies truly are. What can one expect from such pompous politicians who brazenly disguise inflation, reducing the value of benefits, by shifting from the higher RPI method to the lower-rate CPI.

Pontificating over a splendid luncheon, Mrs Thatcher's old pal and confidant dismissed the deepest recession since the 1930s as "so-called".

He remarked that the ConDem's annual cull of 100,000-plus jobs is within the "margin of error". However these exclude the private sector redundancies.

Same old Tories who believe that mass unemployment and poverty are a price worth paying.

Valerie Moody, Rosedale, Little Smeaton, West Yorkshire.

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Recession, what recession? Or as Lord Young observed, courtesy of Harold McMillan, "we've never had it so good" (Yorkshire Post, November 19).

I am 75 years of age and have lived through some tough times, nationally and personally, but having the pleasure of watching the excellent tennis from the 02 Arena this week, I just wonder how all these hundreds of unemployed young people in the audience afford the time and money for such luxuries. Am I completely out of touch with the present day?

Facts and figures

From: Andy Brown, Regional Director, Young People's Learning Agency.

CAN I clarify the position regarding the situation in Yorkshire and the Humber with regard to those young people who are not engaged in employment, education or training (NEETS).

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Your report (Yorkshire Post, November 24) recorded that the figure had risen by 8,000 when you compare the April to June to the July to September months. However, a rise like this happens every year when most young people leave school.

If you compare the same period of the year (July to September) with the same period last year then the NEETs have fallen in the region from 130,000 to 120,000 for 16-24-year-olds. In the age group 16-18 the drop is 5,000. In other words the numbers have dropped dramatically, not increased. This is a result of a lot of hard work by colleges, schools, and training providers in the region who have ensured that the largest number of young people ever are in training in the region.

Lib Dems broke the promise of their manifesto

From: Peter Wood, Scaftworth Close, Doncaster, South Yorkshire,

YOUR article (Yorkshire Post, November 22) in which Vince Cable claims that the Liberal Democrats "haven't betrayed anybody" with regard to their volte-face on university tuition fees raises some important questions.

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Dr Cable asserts that, because the Lib Dems didn't win the election, their manifesto commitment not to increase tuition fees wasn't "binding". Does anyone (especially Vince Cable) think the Lib Dems had a realistic chance of winning the election? Many students were seduced into voting Lib Dem because of their specific promise on tuition fees. This explains their anger when the coalition Government did the opposite of what Clegg's Lib Dems had pledged.

The result of the election (no party with outright majority) was widely anticipated. Surely, as the party most likely to "partner" either the Labour or Conservative parties in any coalition, the Lib Dems should have indicated, prior to the election, which parts of their manifesto were negotiable and which were not.

If the alternative voting (AV) system is introduced, the days of single party majority rule may well be over. All parties must re-think their manifesto strategies (taking account of the changed circumstances), otherwise the integrity and trustworthiness of our political system will sink even lower. The coalition Government is forcing through a programme for which it has no mandate.

Its excuse for doing so is the parlous financial state we find ourselves in as a result of the outgoing Labour administration. If this were true, why have Greece, Portugal, Ireland and many G20 countries experienced similar financial difficulties? Are Labour to blame for all this too?

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Conservatives have been quick to exploit the global financial downturn and are hell-bent on completing Mrs Thatcher's mission to "roll back the state".

What is hard to stomach is that Clegg, Cable and the Lib Dems are complicit in allowing the Tories to destroy the welfare state while the real culprits, the investment bankers, are permitted to continue to enjoy their obscene bonuses.

It will be interesting to see how the voters deliver their verdict on the coalition partners in the coming years. If the Lib Dems bother to publish an election manifesto in future, perhaps it should be located in the fiction department!

Pitfalls of a presidency

From: Phyllis Capstick, Hellifield, Skipton.

THE trouble with Tim Mickleburgh's presidential wish for this country of ours (Yorkshire Post, November 23) is that budding presidents would only be there for their own benefit and glory, and nothing to do with the good of the people or the country, for example, Tony Blair.

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It would take a certain amount of time to vote out an unpopular interloper, and much harm can be done in a relatively short period by someone with first and foremost, their own interests at heart, whereas the Monarchy are born to the service of this country.

From: Richard Coates, Kirkbymoorside, York.

I REALLY do have to respond to anti-royalist Tim Mickleburgh's letter regarding our Royal Family. After a few minutes' research on the internet, I have found that there are many countries experiencing political instability. Over half of these are ruled by presidents. The rest are involved in either civil wars or military coups or not even recognised as countries in their own right yet.

Until he can come up with something better than royalty, certainly not a presidency, he should accept the British way of life or emigrate to Afghanistan or Chad or Colombia or wherever and experience their way of life.

No way back from execution

From: Michael Gulliver, Ashfield, Sturton by Stow, Lincoln.

I READ with interest the letter from John Wilson (Yorkshire Post, November 26) in which he stated that since the death penalty had been abolished, 111 people had been murdered by people who had murdered before and had it not been abolished, those 111 victims would have been alive today.

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He also acknowledges that if we had the death penalty, occasionally an innocent person would be executed, but nowhere near 111. The implication of his letter is that the occasional execution of an innocent person would be worth it if it saved more lives in the long term.

That's all well and good until you become the innocent person suspended on the end of a rope. There's no way back.

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