Squeezed dry by a political system failure

I MUST let you know my present feelings about the current state of politics, particularly in relation to the UK and to some extent internationally.

When the Con/Lib Dem coalition was newly formed, I thought that this would be an advantage to the country.

Alas I was greatly mistaken. The country has now been so financially squeezed that there is hardly any juice left. Food, fuel and prices generally have risen greatly while wages and salaries have been frozen and cut. Jobs have disappeared and the mythical job creation bubble has yet to appear!

What a disgusting price to pay for the errors of bankers and financial investors who have yet to be allotted their share of the financial price that is being paid.

It seems to me that communism has failed – although China still hangs on with a strong smell of capitalism adhered to it – and I think that it is now safe to assume that capitalism has also failed but the “victors” still retain the wealth it “created”.

In conclusion, therefore, it would seem that the most socially and economically political system to succeed for the greater benefit would be in the middle ground or that was once occupied by the Liberal Democrats.

The present Lib Dem leaders appear to have left all that behind and encouraged this Tory excessive squeeze, to ensure that unemployment and its connected misery prevails.

From: Mike Gillson, Quarry Lane, Birstall, Batley.

IN the Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer mounted a further attack on pensioners by introducing a measure to reduce the additional tax free income allowance for the over 65s (dubbed the nanny tax).

The Chancellor has already proposed that public sector workers should lose their national pay agreements. His argument is that there is no call for the same pay rise in a low cost of living area as there is in a high cost of living area.

By extending that argument, why is it necessary for the same level of pension payment in a low cost of living area as a high cost of living area?

Come to think about it, why should people in low cost of living areas have the same tax free allowances as those living in high cost of living areas? Why should the over 60s get winter fuel allowance or free prescriptions? Why should there be free TV licences for some older pensioners?

Watch this space.

From: George Appleby, Clifton, York.

I HOPE many of those who voted David Cameron in will be regretting it, but there will still be some who think because they have a few quid in the bank, a detached house and a big car (even if they aren’t paid for), they are in it together with Dave.

This rotten voting system allows this, and politicians grow fat on it as they do the foot work for the tax-avoiding multi-million pound earners.

From: Richard Godley, Meadowfields, Whitby.

AS a recently retired OAP, Royal Navy veteran and lifelong Tory voter, I am appalled and disgusted with the coalition and George Osborne’s budget.

He seems to forget that the pensioners and nearly pensioners he has figuratively stuck two fingers up to with his £3bn hit are those who have worked hard all their lives and are also literate, numerate and in the main fiscally responsible.

So now we know how this “caring” government is treating us, what to do? We cannot vote for Labour because we all know what Gordon Brown and Tony Blair did to the economy. We cannot vote for the Lib Dems because they will have us into Europe like a shot, probably telling us we are better off because we get more numbers of euros in our pensions than we did pounds!

So who? The only answer seems to be UKIP, an alien idea to most of us but by leaving the EU we would save at least £45m a day (net) in contributions, saving even more than “five times” the amount he has taken from the people who have very long memories and the very people his party will turn to at the next election.

From: Malcolm Naylor, Otley, Leeds.

SO there we have it. A budget for the rich but what else could we expect from a Tory government and their Liberal accomplices? There is only one way to protest and that is at the ballot box.

Airborne bedfellows

From: Martin Hickes, High Street, Farsley, Leeds.

WHILE it is gratifying to learn that the so-called “special relationship” is still intact, at least from this side of the Atlantic, surely we can be spared details that the British Prime Minister was reportedly “tucked into bed”, at least metaphorically speaking, by US President Barack Obama while on board Air Force One.

It makes a great news story and no doubt a PR coup for the word mongers of Whitehall and the White House, but am I the only one who finds the image somewhat representative of the worst aspects of the elected “elite”?

While there are certain understandable “trappings of power”, (Churchill once bathed in the White House for example), surely no finer metonym of the “cosy” relationship between the two can be found?

What next perhaps – matching woolly jumpers at Christmas or shared aftershave lotions, or even teeth whitener?

Imagine if the triumphantly vote-conscious Jim Hacker had returned to No 10 with the news; surely an aghast Sir Humphrey would have said: ‘No, Prime Minister!’

In any case, amidst such mid-air luxury, nice to see that austerity is presumably being observed all round.