Letters - October 19, 2016

Having seen this come up occasionally through my life, I’ve got news for them, it won’t.

They have no concept of the horrors of Nazism –only those who lived through it can know the disastrous consequences of this regime. The perpetrators have no idea whatsoever of the realism Hitler instigated through his blinded notion of a so-called superior race.

While our country has continued to keep this sort of ‘racist hate’ behaviour at bay, is has always been around, for some reason, as each generation discovers a disregard for humanity and mixed racial communities.

We are a cosmopolitan country where racist bullying is frowned upon by most of us. The perpetrators of this recent public racism should be brought to justice and feel the full force of the law. Our country’s legal system should prove it will not tolerate such behaviour, nor treat it lightly.

The culprits should be shown the full horrors of Nazism, but they still wouldn’t be able to comprehend the torture, deaths and horrors that people still with us today prefer to forget, but can’t!

Clifford Chambers

Ashton Road

Blackpool

RACISM

National media is fuelling divisions

Rob Stocks and Michael Holmes reported on Nazi hate campaigns in Blackpool in last week’s Gazette.

All very worrying. Drip by drip, our society is being poisoned with headline-selling hatred, the national press use fear and divisions to sell more papers – it seems that hate pays.

Katie Hopkins in the Sun compared migrants to cockroaches, survivors of the Rwandan genocide told of similar language used to incite ethnic killing.

Racial and religious hate crime soared by 40 per cent after the EU referendum, figures last week showed.

Home Secretary Rudd, after stirring xenophobia following her anti-immigrant speech at Tory conference, was forced to back track on a number of draconian policy proposals.

The Government’s own policies go from blaming and shaming firms who employ overseas workers to a foreigner-free NHS. This is a Government whose policies are contributing to this climate of hate. Even the UN stated unequivocally that elements of the British media are engaging in hate speech and have called on the Government to do more to tackle it.

The right wing media is the single most damaging force in society, and at some point we as a society will have to confront the problem.

Royston Jones

Beryl Avenue

Anchorsholme

PENSIONS

I feel cheated by the changes to pensions

With regard to your article in the Gazette in relation to the Government’s Pension Act 1995 (Gazette, October 10), it is women born in the 1950s who are particularly affected.

I am in full support of the WASPI movement and have signed petitions against the unfair way the Acts have been implemented.

I have paid into the system for 40 years and for most of these I have struggled as a single parent. I was looking forward to retiring at 60 and to receive a travel pass. When I recently found out that I would have to wait until I was 66 to retire, I felt cheated. It is time that we are given answers as to why the government believes this is acceptable for 2.6 million women and their families.

Alyson Russell

Thornton Cleveleys

ENTERTAINMENT

Pubs and bars can’t keep slashing prices

The £1.50 pint of beer culture being adopted in Blackpool is doing nobody any favours. Even operating as a ‘free of tie’ licensed premises business, in real terms there is no profit to be gained from selling pints at £1.50 in this day and age. Regardless of the volume sold, turnover is simply not profit.

On every pint sold there is 20 per cent VAT owed to HMRC. That equates to 30p per pint owed if sold at £1.50.

Bars have the following weekly costs to consider, before any profit is calculated:

* Staff wages

* Heat, Light, Water

* Business rates

* Rent, lease or mortgage fees

* PRS Music licence

* PPL Music licence

* Entertainment

* Stock purchases

* Cleaning and maintenance

* Door security (if applicable)

An average pint of beer now costs a ‘free of tie’ business in the region of £1.10 a pint to purchase (excluding VAT),

Who really wants all that responsibility of owning a licensed premises to face a ‘break even’ watertight profit margin, or potential operating loss?

For Blackpool to move forward in a prosperous way, attract a wider demographic, its economic development vision needs to adopt a metropolitan style way of thinking.

Stephen Pierre

Freeholder & Premises Licence Holder

The Galleon Bar

Blackpool

COURTS

Everybody has 
to pay their way

Of course, Mr Hughes should pay his gas bill (Gas meter rebel told to pay his bills, Gazette, October 14) and if not the money should be taken from his, no doubt, generous benefits.

People like him, disabled or not, are just a drain on society.

Steve Young

Blackpool