The pathetic shadows of Thatcher

Yes, William Snowden (Yorkshire Post, August 4) is right to draw the comparisons between Margaret Thatcher’s term of office and the total mess created by the Left, from which we are still suffering and followed by the awful regimes of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

However, our present Conservative/Lib Dem Government is a pathetic shadow of Mrs Thatcher with Big Society Dave, Liam Fox and William Hague making much noise but short on substance.

All three are continuing to support our involvement and meddling in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria while decimating our armed forces with further cuts and “reorganisation” and the Government is still refusing to provide the electorate with a referendum to leave the EU – before the UK joins Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain etc into Third World broke status.

Yet our MPs appear to be oblivious to our decline and suspect economy, as your correspondents Barry Foster and George Appleby have highlighted, but how do we encourage better qualified persons to enter politics?

From: Brian Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

IN his polemic against Left-wing ideology William Snowden describes the Yorkshire Post letters page as “a miasma of vituperation masquerading as considered opinion” (Yorkshire Post, August 4).

This will come as a surprise to many observers who see the Yorkshire Post as a respected, centre-right newspaper. Yes, some regular letter writers are disposed to Old Labour dogma but, when it comes to politics, the majority strike me as being well to the Right of the measured editorial.

You load 16 tons...

From: James Anthony Bulmer, Peel Street, Horbury, Wakefield.

THE recession, we are led to believe by some politicians, is worldwide. Yet, we see that several eastern countries are hardly affected and the so-called world powers are in dire financial trouble.

America is in the same trouble as the miner in the song 16 Tons – another day older and deeper in debt.

Is this caused by the attempts to become masters of the universe, when billions of dollars have been launched into space with as yet no real results?

The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, the Bank of England, has no money and is now having to sew on patches and darn socks.

Is this the result of attempts to attain a more prominent place in the world, which has resulted in billions of pounds being borrowed, and spent, on fruitless wars and the ardent fervour for cultural status and this, when our streets have been lined with litter of the worst kind?

China, a sleeping giant, has been awakened by the countries in the West and the cries of woe over their greed, and borrowing and the debts they now have.

China’s exporting has, and still is, making it a world power. Is this the case of The Hare and the Tortoise, with the West rushing to be the best and pausing to rest on its laurels? While the Chinaman moves along slowly but surely to reach his goal. How the mighty have fallen.

Has America won the west and will Britannia continue to rule the waves?

Positive ideas on money

From: Robert Reynolds, Harrogate.

YET again global meltdown is beckoning and nobody knows how to stop it. Except one man, sadly dead, who has left us his golden legacy, Major C H Douglas.

I invite readers to Google his name and read his ideas. In essence, Major Douglas realised, in the 1920s, that workers’ incomes were too low to purchase their total output. He realised the shortfall in purchasing power was coming from the b anks who create money – and interest-bearing debt.

The solution is simple. The Government should take control of creating money – interest free – and use it for social good. Major Douglas proposed each individual should receive a National Dividend.

Economists fear this would create inflation. A pressure group – I invite everyone to join www.positivemoney.org.uk – states that only the Bank of England should have this power, politicians only being told how much they can spend.

I calculate this would be about £90bn a year – enough to reverse the cuts.

Open doors at churches

From: The Rev Matt Woodcock, Holy Trinity Church, Hull.

AS an newly-ordained minister, I found the Rev Neil McNicholas’s column (Yorkshire Post, August 4) a very good example of why the established Church is in sharp decline.

Of course I sympathise up to a point with some of his more extreme examples of wedding and baptism guests causing chaos in the pews. But I would remind him of the former Archbishop William Temple’s comment that “the Church is the only co-operative society in the world that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members”.

I would argue that our churches should first and foremost be places of welcome, relevancy, joy, and prayer.

The Church he describes is a closed shop for those who never usually, to use his language, “darken the doors”. The Rev McNicholas is right that, to a great many people, Church is a “foreign place”, a place “they don’t seem to know anymore” and don’t know “what is required of them”.

But whose fault is that? I would argue that the finger of blame should not be pointed at the brides with plunging necklines, beer-swigging baptism guests or out of control kids, but rather at the Church leaders themselves.