Wednesday's Letters: Battle between policies and TV presentation

Is either Mr Cameron or Mr Clegg better equipped to sort out the economy than Mr Brown? He has a slow but steadfast plan to keep it growing gradually, starting with halving the deficit in four years. This is far better than trying to chop slices out of it immediately.

We suffered years of failed quick-fix, make-do-and-mend, sticking plaster policies without one plan for the future between 1979 and 1997. They didn't work then and won't work now. A one per cent increase in the National Insurance contributions on people earning over 20,000 is due in April next year. The Tories claim this is a tax on jobs, they said the same on equal pay, the minimum wage and the last NI increase. They were wrong on each occasion.

On immigration from outside the EU, people can only be admitted for work, and then only after jobs have been advertised locally and not filled. Student visas have been brought under strict control and immigrants are issued with new style identity cards.

In my opinion, these should carry more weight than a couple of

television appearances.

From: JW Smith, Sutton on Sea.

From: D Smith, Sandhill Way, Harrogate.

I HAVE waited in vain for howls of protest from the electorate regarding the proposals from the main parties about how to finance the huge debt created by the Socialist government.

Surely as we are the ones who fund the economy, we should also have a say in the running of it, so I say to whichever party takes power:

Do not even think about raising tax levels, we pay too much already.

Do not think of cutting our services, they are already overstretched.

Start by not giving tens of millions of pounds to the EU, thereby saving billions.

Disengage ourselves from the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, saving billions.

Cancel the Big Brother identity card scheme, saving billions.

Stop giving our money to Africa. The hundreds of billions pumped into Africa since the 1960s should have bought them all detached houses with Land Rovers in the drive, but the money is gone, who knows where.

Start making the people who are domiciled abroad, but who make their money here, pay a fair share of income tax.

Silent march of protest voters

From: Sheila Smith, Saltaugh Road, Keyingham, near Hull.

WHILE I agree wholeheartedly with every point made by Duncan Hamilton on the opinion page (Yorkshire Post, April 24), I do take him to task over his decision to abstain from voting at the General Election.

He calls it "the silent scream" in the belief that a small turnout at the polls will register with the politicians and force them to re-engage with us, the public, by being honest for once about the problems this country has and how to repair them.

Unfortunately, all the politicians will do is dismiss the low poll as being caused by apathy and the 'couldn't care less' brigade. They will continue in the same vein, conning us, giving out messages they think will placate us, while this once great country of ours slips further down the league tables.

Our industrial heart has been ripped out, our farmers neglected and slung on the dung heap, our hospitals and schools in crisis,

immigration out of control, benefit scroungers on the increase and our gold reserves sold off cheaply. The only beneficiaries from the present debacle are greedy politicians, rich bankers and solicitors, civil servants, the workshy and criminals.

This Labour Government should never have signed up to the European Court of Human Rights. It should have built prisons instead of funding the illegal Iraq war. Our border police should have been strengthened to keep out foreign murderers, rapists, drug barons and illegal immigrants.

The number of unemployed people, put at 2.5m, is misleading. If Labour hadn't deliberately created more than 800,000 civil servants, then the figure would have been near to 3.5m.

Our children and grandchildren will have to pay the extra taxes needed to pay for the gold-plated pensions of all those civil servants. What a legacy.

My answer to Duncan Hamilton is to march down to the polling station

and to spoil your voting paper. Every spoilt paper is counted.

When the number of spoilt papers is larger than the total number of votes cast for all parties, then and only then will the politicians wake up to the mood of the silent majority.

Not a "silent scream" Duncan, but a deafening "silent march".

From: Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley.

IF Labour wins the General Election, not only will we lumbered with five more years of Gordon Brown in 10 Downing Street, but even worse we will get 18 consecutive years of socialism. We shall be plagued by further stealth taxes and ever expanding waste.

Does the nightmare have to continue?

Counting cost of lost coal

From: Peter M Burrow, Welham Road, Norton, Malton.

A BRILLIANT local showing of Billy Elliot reminded everyone of the last miners' strike using a horrific newsreel of clashes between police and miners.

Was the violence necessary? Mrs Thatcher had seen a previous

administration forced into a three-day week by dwindling coal stocks. She built up coal stocks.

On the miners' side, Mr Scargill refused a national ballot and Nottingham miners carried on working.

The effect of a prolonged strike is on coal faces. The machines are trapped and the face then sealed. The 40-plus faces affected threatened the future of many pits.

More effort should have been made to compromise between the two parties. Later, the same government should have tried to avoid the pit closure programme.

For the future, could a new government promise to re-open pits? Half a million tonnes of coal was left under Wakefield when Sharlston colliery closed.

EU membership neglected topic of poll race

From: From: JG Riseley, Harcourt Drive, Harrogate

IN an an election being presented as a three horse race, any issue on which the three larger parties offer no choice is tending to be neglected.

It is commonly and misleadingly labelled as "Europe". That, of course, is not an issue, it's a continent and one for which I have a lot of affection.

The issue is our belonging to the European Union. The EU is a

bureaucracy and an imperial authority. Few can pinpoint when it morphed into this from the apparently benign Common Market we thought we joined. At any attempt to halt the transition, we are told this progression was built into the plan and cannot be stopped. It is clear that the recent fashion for taking us into things on a false prospectus was hardly new.

Complaints that the EU is undemocratic have been taken as an invitation to expand its institutions, structures and number of hangers-on. But the problem is that the size of Europe, and its linguistic and cultural diversity, render the EU inherently incapable of acquiring the virtues of a democracy.

The EU has borrowed from the medieval Church the fine principle of subsidiarity; that is of taking decisions at the lowest practical level. But it has no intention of applying that principle in full. Indeed, it could hardly do so and still justify the flow of vast sums of money through its books used to buy the loyalty of adolescent states that enjoy some sense of autonomy while still collecting their pocket money.

It was the gut reaction of the British people, untutored in economics but sentimentally attached to the pound, that spared us entering the recession, like Greece, in the straight jacket of the euro. The then Chancellor's conditions for entry were a fig leaf to hide his fear of the electorate. We should have more confidence in our own gut reactions and had less in the advice of our self-serving elite. If there has been resignation to our fate in the EU it may well be because we have been let down by our elite and we feel we could hardly fair any worse under a different, pan-European, one.

But, seeing those who make their way in Brussels, it is clear the EU is quite capable of combining all that is worst in Europe within this new class.

We can defy them without losing the friendship of those that are best, within the grass-roots of our neighbours.

Confusion over Tory policy

From: Rosie Winterton, Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber.

IT is astonishing that William Hague has come out and said that Conservative Party policy is to allow Yorkshire Forward to continue – when David Cameron has made it absolutely clear on a number of occasions that the "regional stuff" will be abolished.

The Conservatives have said that local authorities will do the work of the Regional Development Agencies but, as your editorial said yesterday, it is extremely difficult for them to do this in isolation. They need the input of business, which is what they get from Yorkshire Forward.

In your paper, you also refer to the "wind power revolution". Wind turbine manufacturing is just one example of potential jobs which will not be created without the work of Yorkshire Forward. The Conservatives approach would put the future of manufacturing in our region at risk.

Travelling back in time

From: Andrew Dixon, Bessacarr, Doncaster.

IN reply to Tom Howley's letter (Yorkshire Post, May 3) you no longer get a free bus pass when reaching 60.

That went from April 6 this year as part of the Labour Government's drive to equalise pensions for both men and women at 65 by 2020.

From that year you will get your bus pass when you reach 65.

The age you get your pass is being put back in phases so, for instance, I will be 60 in December and will have to wait until September 2011 for my bus pass.

Bin trip

From: AB Reeve, North Milford, Tadcaster.

THE first party that "promised" to introduce a law, under which the penalty for mixing recyclable waste in blue, black, and green boxes, would be compulsory deportation to Australia – at the Government's expense – will get my vote.

Way out

From: Edwin Bateman, South Dyke, Great Salkeld, Penrith, Cumbria.

WITH UK sovereignty now handed over to the EU by the Lib-Lab-Cons in the Lisbon Treaty, England is finished unless enough independent MPs force a vote on EU exit.