Letters - November 28, 2017

Government has lost touch with reality
Chancellor Philip Hammond unveils his autumn budget (credit: PA Wire)Chancellor Philip Hammond unveils his autumn budget (credit: PA Wire)
Chancellor Philip Hammond unveils his autumn budget (credit: PA Wire)

My MP, Paul Maynard, told this paper last week about a different budget than the one I watched.

Hammond seems to be steady as the economy sinks. It reflected Tory priorities, to fill the boots of private enterprise with public money.

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As real wages, benefits and living standards fall over the next four years and we head towards recession, the chancellor cuts corporation tax and does nothing about tax dodging havens around the world.

To pump 15 billion into the housing market over five years is an anti-solution. Stamp duty and help-to-buy gimmicks inflate house prices and boost shares of property and development companies. The practical option is to lift the cap on local government house building.

Also we should hold to account the city of London finance sector over low levels of investing in productive industry, and demand measures to direct, private and public capital into manufacturing, construction and energy infrastructure.

The benefits of greater investment, new technology and higher productivity must be used to improve ordinary people’s work-life balance and living standards, not to feed the city and big business fat cats.

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This is an out-of-touch government with no ideas of the reality of people’s lives and no plan to improve them.

It’s time for them to go.

Royston Jones

Beryl Avenue
Anchorsholme

ENERGY

We’re not paid 
to protest

I have been told by a friend, who overheard it on a bus, that the protesters at Cuadrilla’s fracking site 
on Preston New Road are paid £80 a day by Greenpeace.

This would be a very useful addition to my pension (yes, I have had a job, thank you).

Alas, it is not 
true!

Most of the protesters are local to the area, many of us pensioners reluctantly spending our hard-earned retirement by the side of a road in all weathers to protest against this inherently risky industry with its toxic consequences.

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Our reward will be to secure the safety of our children and grandchildren – and yours.

We are supported at times by representatives of the Green, Labour and Lib Dem Parties, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, various trades unions and others, including people from many parts of England also under threat from the hundreds of PEDL licences issued.

We are also supported by some people who are so appalled by the harm to our health and our environment posed by this process that they have left jobs, homes and families to do what they can to stop it wherever it occurs.

These are the ones labelled ‘professional protesters’, although they are certainly not paid by anybody and do what they do from a deep sense of conviction that they are prepared to act upon.

The sad thing is that it is unnecessary.

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The Government’s own Strategic Assessment Report on Security of Gas Supply found that the UK has “a healthy capacity margin to 2035” without fracking.

By then, if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming, we must be well on the way to replacing all fossil fuels with renewable energy which is where the investment, tax breaks and planning support going to fracking should be directed.

Jill Walton

Inskip

FOULING

More dog mess 
as it gets darker

Has anyone noticed how much more dog mess /pavement fouling there is since darkness has been coming to us much more early in the evenings ?

Very noticeable when I go to the newsagent most mornings to buy a paper.

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I recently observed from a distance a walker with three dogs having great difficulty in trying to clear the mess of one dog and, frankly, left most of it by the time I arrived at the same point.

NAME AND ADDRESS 
SUPPLIED

APPEAL

Time to put on your seasonal smile

As the festive season approaches, we’re asking readers to help us raise money for some very special children during their Christmas celebrations this year.

The Children’s Trust is asking you to put on your seasonal smile, don your festive socks and frocks and show some Christmas spirit by getting involved in Festive Friday, a national dress-up day, on December 8.

Haven’t got anything festive? The downloadable Festive Friday toolkit complete with DIY selfie props is the perfect accompaniment for your Christmas party and those festive party photos, in return for a suggested donation of £2.

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Each pack includes classic Christmas pudding glasses, Santa’s hat and beard, a trendy holly bow tie and some naughty and nice signs to stir things up a bit! Money raised will help to support children with brain injury from across the UK.

Sign up today at www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk/festivefriday. Thank you.

Hannah Vince

Fundraiser at The 
Children’s Trust