Sir Keir Starmer’s contempt for North won’t be forgotten – Yorkshire Post Letters

NOW we know what Sir Keir Starmer really thinks of us in the North (The Yorkshire Post, March 4).

After learning of Budget plans to create a new Treasury headquarters in Darlington, a new freeport in the North, and Northern funding, Starmer launched an astonishing attack, saying “that isn’t levelling up, that is giving up”.

Giving up on who? The South? It looks like Labour and Starmer think if they keep us here in the North without investment opportunities we will continue voting for them. No chance. More red bricks will be removed from their wall.

We are no longer the Labour stronghold you Labour lot thought you could rely on. You’re worse than the Tories.

From: Bob Holland, Skipton Road, Cononley, Keighley,

WHILE the Chancellor repeated he was being “honest” and “fair” in his Budget last week, this ignored facts which he knew about. He did not mention that many councils, like Leeds, Newcastle and Manchester, have suffered severe cuts in grants from central Government and less income from business rates as shops have closed. Nationally thousands more people in local government will be unemployed.

He and his party decided not to ”protect the NHS”. Enforcing cuts in social care harms the NHS by making hospital discharge more difficult, and admissions to hospital rise if support services at home are reduced.

From: Lee Bloomfield, Chief Executive, Manningham Housing Association, Bradford.

WHILST I welcome news that the £20 uplift to Universal Credit payments has been extended until September, the Chancellor has merely created yet another cliff edge for those families 
that depend on this extra income.

Mr Sunak claimed that income tax would not go up, but, for those in the lowest paid jobs, the decision to freeze the personal allowance for basic rate taxpayers will have the same effect with workers losing increasing amounts of their 
take home pay as time goes 
on.

I fully understand the desire to help people on to the property ladder.

However, history tells us that this will gravely impair access to decent quality homes for those unable to afford a mortgage.

Decreasing the size of the rented sector in the midst of an ever-deepening housing crisis is short-sighted at best and grossly irresponsible at worst.

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