Tuesday's letters: Taxpayers' money wasted on young offenders

A think tank has said the money would be better spent on crime prevention, with calls for fewer offenders to be locked up.

Of course, this money could be better spent, so why do we spend this in the first place and why do we pay people to always miss the blatantly obvious?

Before suggesting fewer offenders are locked up, do they ever challenge why it costs us 140,000 a year to keep them in jail?

If we take a step backwards; if we allow this information to fully sink in, we come to the only possible conclusion that to spend 140,000 a year on keeping a young offender in jail is a monstrous abuse of taxpayers' hard-earned money and a gross insult to all decent hard-working, law-abiding people.

That all main political parties, by their inaction, condone such wanton waste of public funds clearly shows their unsuitability for government. Spending 140,000 per year on each offender can only provide conditions which encourage rather than deter criminal behaviour, as confirmed by re-offending statistics, yet those in charge of our legal and penal systems are unwilling to even consider they may be wrong and plough on with further flawed ideas that drag us ever deeper into the mire.

Too often we hear that cancer sufferers are denied life prolonging drugs as the cost cannot be justified and such monies could be better used, so it must be unbelievable, obnoxious and sickeningly disgusting that the 140,000 a year spent to jail an offender has been allowed and apparently accepted as necessary. Is this acceptance shared by the majority?

I suggest the sum of 140,000 currently spent is drastically reduced by 135,000, with calls for fewer offenders to be locked up forgotten.

This would still leave a more than adequate and reasonable 5,000 per year for their keep, a sum which even then is greater than the pension a retired person is expected to live on.

This would, also, begin to teach them a lesson in reality and that a free ride is no longer a lifestyle choice.

Tories cannot bring change within the EU

From: D Wood, Thorntree Lane, Goole, East Yorkshire.

IN your article "We have a real fight on our hands to win, says Cameron" (Yorkshire Post, March 1), it was reported that the Conservatives' lead over Labour has dropped to two points, and they don't seem to realise why this has happened.

Mr Cameron and his team are asking us to vote for change, and the voters of this country want change, but what we know, that Mr Cameron is missing, is that the changes he is proposing cannot be carried out while we are still in the EU – for example, we can't stop immigration, or deport foreign criminals – and that his stance on the EU is no different to Labour's.

I would appeal to every voter in the country: don't stay at home, go out and vote, but for our country's sake, vote for real change, let's try UKIP. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

We cannot start to put our country right until we are free of this foreign dictatorship and can make our own laws for the benefit of our own country, and not just blindly follow orders from Brussels which handicap us and which will eventually destroy Britain.

Politicians of the past

From: Peter J Brown, Connaught Road, Middlesbrough.

IT seems rather strange that the news of the death of the former leader of the the Labour Party Michael Foot (Yorkshire Post, March 4)came at the same time as the death of the grandson of the former wartime prime minster Winston Churchill. The grandson had the same name as the wartime premier.

Michael Foot may have been a disastrous leader for the Labour Party who led them to a landslide defeat in the General Election of 1983, but his intellectual ability cannot be disputed. He was a passionate speaker, reader and writer. His crowning glory was his biography of the great Labour politician Nye Bevan.

The young Winston was on the opposite side of the political spectrum. He never reached high office in the Conservative Party or government. Like Michael Foot, he was often outspoken. The young Winston had problems in his marriage and private life.

The question that should be asked will there be any room in Parliament for men like Michael Foot and the young Winston after the next

General Election?

Cut council pensions

From: David Baldwin, Shires Lane, Embsay.

ISN'T it amazing that, after the revelation that councils will have to cut costs which they say will lead to "reduced services", that they refuse to even consider terminating their final salary pension schemes into which all council tax payers are contributing (Yorkshire Post, March 2)?

Despite the fact that they are envisaging redundancies, in order to save costs, they appear to be oblivious to the fact that by ending their inflation-proofed final pension scheme that they would be able to reduce the impact on their employees.

After all, we poor council tax payers in the private sector, who have had our pension schemes decimated by Gordon Brown, continue to pay into the public sector pension pots through our council tax – and for what?

Why should essential services be affected at the cost of "pension fund contributions" when the so-called "public servants" ignore the "public", whom they are supposed to "serve", yet still ensure that they will be ensured of a comfortable retirement?

Appetite for dialect

From: Mrs Moya Redfearn, Spring Hall Close, Shelf, Halifax.

READING Ian McMillan's lovely article (Yorkshire Post, March 3) reminded me of visiting my great aunt and uncle in the 1950s. I was the chosen one to have lunch each Saturday with the relatives (although in those days it was dinner).

Once they had scrubbed my knees clean (from playing on the recreation ground), I would ask: "What is for dinner today, please?" Uncle Herbert would reply, either "A handful o' t'doorstep" or "Cold cabbage and lard".

If a friend came to call for me after tea at home with my mum, and I was still eating my mum used to ask them: "Has tha kicked table leg for thi tea?"

Really though she did not speak in dialect, but that is what her parents would have said to her.

Lovely article, fond memories.

History lesson for Brown

From: John Holland, Lindeth Road, Silverdale, Carnforth.

WHAT a pathetic exhibition at the Chilcot Inquiry (Yorkshire Post, March 6). Gordon Brown is a historian; how did he not know that war is the most expensive undertaking a country can engage in?

Has he forgotten that you have to prepare in advance for offensive activities? Does he not know that regime change is not a legitimate reason to go to war? We have constantly been at war since the year 2000, yet we have never had a war-footing budget or a proper defence review.

As for not remembering conversations from 2004 when defence chiefs threatened to resign, that beggars belief. Civil servants, if not military men, must have discussed this with him and one does not forget such conversations.

Was he staunch in his own defence? No he was obdurate. He is always right; other people make mistakes.

Let's have some Tory honesty over Lord Ashcroft

From: Howard A Knight, Lyons Street, Sheffield.

THE Honours Scrutiny Committee originally rejected the nomination of Michael Ashcroft as a peer, because he was not resident in the UK and because he wasn't paying his taxes here.

William Hague re-nominated him in 2000 on the basis of a promise that Ashcroft would become resident in the UK and pay his taxes here. He wrote "this decision will cost him (and benefit the Treasury) tens of millions a year in tax".

Michael Ashcroft himself then confirmed that he intended "to reorganise his affairs in order to return to live in Britain". It was only on the basis of these promises that the Honours Scrutiny Committee allowed the nomination to proceed.

After years of questioning about whether these

promises were ever kept – and while (the now) Lord Ashcroft was made Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party and donated millions of pounds (or, more accurately, Belize dollars) – we now learn that those promises have never been kept.

Michael Ashcroft was honoured on the basis of a false prospectus. He should resign immediately.

William Hague has now admitted that he has known about this dishonesty for "some months". Why did he keep shtum? Why has he colluded in this comprehensive breach of trust? Why should anyone ever trust the contents of any letter he writes?

I think he should come clean now.