Letters - March 15, 2017

I have to wonder whether any of the parties of government, past or present, realise that the NHS is supposed to be funded from our ever-rising tax burden? We see here how an NHS Trust has been driven to the status of being a profitable business and it beggars belief that the Labour-run council of Blackpool is the enabler of this state of affairs.

Coun Blackburn and his colleagues should hang their heads in shame that they would be party to both the illness tax of hospital car parking charges as well as making a profit off the back of future NHS users and their families.

When publicity is needed for their campaigns we hear how they are all “the party of the NHS”. Frankly I believe neither Labour, Conservatives or Liberal Democrats care a jot about it and it will be a great day for Blackpool and the country when politicians stop meddling with it and bringing in privatisation by the back door.

Kim Knight

UKIP Blackpool Committee

POLITICS

Get your facts right on Labour’s record

I am writing regarding Dr Barry Clayton and his letter ‘Labour will never learn its lesson’ (Your Say, Gazette, March 8).

Maybe it’s the Tory party that needs to learn its lesson – in seven long years of austerity, the working class have endured no increase in pay, three million people are using food banks to feed their families, and the health service is on its knees and being run into the ground in order for the Tories to bring in an American-style privatised system, where only people with healthcare insurance will get treatment.

They have cut billions from the social care fund, while all our local services are under-funded to such an extent that last summer Blackpool Council could not afford to cut the grass.

All this shrinking of the welfare state is in order to maintain a low tax system which benefits the rich and wealthy and leaves the working class, poor and disabled in utter despair.

In seven years of austerity the Tories have given away billions of pounds in tax cuts to rich individuals and wealthy companies – many that don’t pay any tax.

Most of the debt the last Labour government left was not down to them, it was the result of the banking crash and the worldwide recession which followed. I would also point out that, at the 2010 election, the economy was growing again at 2.4 per cent – the Tories haven’t managed that in seven years.

So Dr Clayton, if you’re going to bash Labour, perhaps you could get your facts right.

William Pennington

Rosefinch Way

Marton

COLUMN

The right questions 
- but no answers

Blaise Tapp’s comment (Gazette, 11 March) raises the right questions, but fails to produce any answers.

Yes, austerity is causing a good deal of dissatisfaction, and even misery, in many instances, but how are we to solve this problem? More particularly, where are the funds to be raised in order to fill this gap?

Might I suggest that the billions of dubious expenditure on the EU budget, foreign aid which in many cases ends up in the wrong pockets, useless vanity projects such as Trident, and the cash thrown at initiatives which should be self-funding (such as sport, culture and the arts) might be better spent on the basic infrastructure on which our success as a competitive nation depends? Not to mention the puny cost of a few more tax inspectors saving us vast sums in tax evasion? Just a suggestion!

Walter Cairns

Via email

RAPE

Judge had a 
sensible point

What is it with social media that, when someone is brave enough to voice their personal opinion, they are taken to task for doing so?

Judge Lindsey Kushner was quite right to state that women need to take care when out for an evening to ensure they stay safe, regardless of the amount of liquor they drink.

However, it appears that sexual violence groups are taking her to task for saying so: citing that the man is always to blame in any rape case that is reported.

What the critics fail to appreciate is that women that drink almost to the point of being incapable are being stupid and, as the judge quite correctly stated, leaving themselves open to abuse.

What is wrong in someone pointing that out? If a couple of hikers decided to climb the Matterhorn wearing trainers and summer clothing, resulting in the mountain rescue having to be called because they were in difficulties with exposure and suffering frostbite, most people would no doubt consider they were stupid, having acted irresponsibly. So what is the difference between the idiotic hikers and women drinking to the point they have no idea of what is happening either around them or to them?

KS

Address supplied

BREXIT

‘Cry baby 
remainers’

All those lawyers and Lords who are trying to stamp out Brexit by blocking it in the House of Lords are the worse cry babies in living memory because they are not man enough to admit EU referendum defeat.

They have no respect for democracy and are behaving like mini tinpot dictators, as if they are trying to introduce Robert Mugabe-style politics to Britain.

They don’t care about what it best for Britain as long as the EU lines their pockets with fat gold-plated pensions. They are converting Britain from a democracy to an autocracy and behaving disgracefully by loading the dice unfairly in favour of the EU remainers, even after they lost the referendum.

R N Coupe

Via email