We ignore the lesson that cuts don’t end slumps

From: Coun Frank McManus, Longfield Road, Todmorden.

I WAS horrified by your front page report (Yorkshire Post, September 26) of “fears for the vulnerable as council cuts bite”.

Homelessness, isolation and neglect are “on the rise” across Yorkshire, where for example two Leeds hostels for the homeless are being closed – all for lack of money, which is now just an abstraction on which we have come to depend as a lubricant for the wheels of industry.

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We ignore the lesson of the 1930s that cuts are no way out of recessions, though we recognise the absurdity of Suffolk County Council sacking its lollipop ladies in furtherance of the Con Dem Coalition’s Plan A.

My aunt was a dressmaker, and when she couldn’t obtain her favourite brand of sewing machine oil, she would buy another firm’s product.

Similarly, in August 1914, when a run on the banks threatened to break them, Chancellor David Lloyd George issued Treasury Notes – which were nicknamed Bradburys after the signature which they carried – to avert collapse.

Should we not all be demanding the Government to issue “Britpounds” as a supplementary interest-free currency valid for all internal UK transactions?

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I fear that its present policies risk sending Britain spiralling down towards Third World standards; is it not alarming that its calls for swift stern action against post-riot looters are accompanied by a complacent eight-year time schedule for reining in the bankers who looted the world’s commerce?

We should follow Shelley’s call to “rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number” and write courteously yet firmly to our MPs warning them that votes will be withheld from those who condone Plan A!