Young savers being chased by taxman

In our leisure time, we frequent a small country pub in North Yorkshire. As rural pubs do, they employ a number of young floor staff, from the age of 16 upwards.

On a weekend these staff are working unsociable shifts, which can take in Friday evenings, Saturday afternoons and evenings, plus Sunday afternoons and evenings and other hours through the week. The minimum wage for these younger people is £3.68 per hour, but for some years now they have been paid £5. Some of these young people are putting money away in savings accounts to aid them through university.

Now, however, they are being vigorously pursued by the Inland Revenue, who are going to tax them on their tips.

So after the owners aid them by paying above the minimum rate, and customers tip them for good service, the Prime Minister and Chancellor decide to penalise these hard-working young people, who are trying to better themselves by working weekend hours, when others are out enjoying themselves.

Guests are, apparently, left speechless when informed of this situation.

Personally, I could not believe that after someone leaves a tip from their tax-paid income, the Chancellor, Mr Osborne wanted another chunk.

This money is left as a gift for making our night enjoyable, and is totally discretionary.

Mr Cameron may stand and pontificate, “we are all in this together”, but when one sees the pensions, payouts and expenses of public figures, paid for by penalising young people such as these, it doesn’t ring true. In fact, it absolutely stinks.

No doubt for the Prime Minister and his cohorts, their future is bright and golden. After a spell in office, Europe beckons, with all the tax-free benefits that bestows.

After pillaging and looting, they move on to the next gravy train. They can ignore youngsters such as these. If a shortage of funds means missing out on university, well, who cares? After all, as long as the money keeps flowing into the politicians ever-greedier pockets, by whatever means, what does it matter? A case of “I’m all right Jack, pull the ladder up”?

Balance of trade

From: Malcolm Naylor, Grange View, Otley.

At the Conservative Party conference, Prime Minister David Cameron enthused over the level of our exports. And he is right.

In spite of the economic crisis, the UK’s export trade is booming. We export armaments to repressive, undemocratic regimes, and they export body bags and wounded soldiers back to us.

As one of the world’s largest arms exporters, we “enjoy” the profits and employment from increasing the worlds’ stock of weapons of death and mass destruction. Unfortunately we also end up in the firing line.

UK’s import/export activities include importing foreign billionaire capitalists who buy our national assets and then export their profits to offshore tax havens.

We also export billions of pounds to Europe and they export their benefit dependants to us.

Furthermore, we export billions in foreign aid, which end up mostly in the pockets of dictators who then use this to buy... yes, you guessed it. Arms for repression, genocide and against western military occupation of their countries.

However the one thing we do not export is democracy. How can we, when we don’t have it here?

So UK Ltd exports are doing very nicely, and we can sleep easy knowing the Government is working hard in the best interests of capitalists and laying the foundations for future conflicts around the world.

But what else could be expected from a country that accumulated its wealth from the slave trade?

This is not an economic crisis. It is a social and moral one. The third world war has begun, and has no national boundaries. It’s between the rich against the poor.

Bring British troops home

From: D Birch, Smithy Lane, Cookridge, Leeds.

The more you read, hear and see about Afghanistan, the clearer it becomes that a great number of their population want us out.

A large portion of our population want to see our troops home and have a life that doesn’t send them to a psychiatrist and the hospital where they will come out with metal limbs or in wheelchairs.

The Ministry of Defence want to cut the numbers, so bring them home, calculate the amount it would have cost us to stay another five years, and spend the money rehabilitating these men and women and their families and take care of them properly. God knows they are entitled to it.

The First World War was bad in the way frontline troops were just slaughtered. The Second World War was bad enough and we had the war to end all wars.

But our troops in Afghanistan have gone through, and are still going through, days when almost every day they go out on patrol knowing this is not a war, but that some mate is going to lose his life or a limb without firing a shot at an enemy.

There is no wonder some of them need a lot of care and understanding when they come home.

It’s time the population of this country got in touch with their MPs and the Government and told them what the country wants, not what they want to keep their political lives intact.