Letters: When will the powerful pay their dues?
When will our government realise that the people of the UK want these very people to pay their dues through higher taxation for the damage they have done and for the way they are still demanding a standard of living way beyond our country’s means and being denied to the millions of others who contribute more to our country in fairness, commitment and loyalty.
It is time that David Cameron and his team realised how strongly the public still feel about bankers and the gentle way government treats them.
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Hide AdAs each year passes with no action against the avarice of the financial sector, the Tories will keep being accused of being the party of the rich and powerful.
Iain J McConnell
Gifford
East Lothian
The Chancellor, in his autumn statement, gave us all a lesson in self-destruction.
From 2013, public sector pay rises will be capped at 1 per cent. Public sector job losses, forecast at 400,000 by 2016, were reviewed on Tuesday to 710,000 by 2017.
Those announcements on the eve of the largest revolt by public sector workers indicate that George Osborne is surely in a world of his own, oblivious to the chaos that will ensue as a result.
If ever the public sector unions needed ammunition for its argument, Mr Osborne came to its rescue.
Catriona C Clark
Hawthorn Drive
Banknock, Falkirk
AMONG other things, one has to ask how desperate is the state of the UK’s finances and how frantically concerned the Westminster Treasury when Mr Osborne can offer, never mind afford, £50 million for a cross-Border sleeper train service that isn’t any longer nationalised and publicly owned?
Or is this maybe the reason, and that were it nationalised its public service staff would anyway be put under the same financial squeeze as other public service employees. Catch a £50m offer if it was in the public sector? Some chance!
Ian Johnstone
Forman Drive
Peterhead
Following the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s decision to put new money into capital expenditure projects, the Scottish Government has the perfect opportunity to reverse the 34 per cent cut in the housing budget and stimulate jobs in the construction industry.
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Hide AdAnd, coming just one day after statistics showed a 36 per cent slump in new-start socially-rented house building, this extra money should be used by the Scottish Government to plug the gaping funding gap and invest in desperately needed socially rented housing.
Ministers need to ensure that as much of this money as possible finds its way towards shovel-ready projects that can get going immediately – providing more jobs and more homes.
Graeme Brown
Shelter Scotland
South Charlotte Street
Edinburgh
Am I becoming a conspiracy freak or is the West gradually becoming an oligarchy? A decade ago the word was almost unknown, but with debt and the banking lobby dominating our legislatures the future for democracy is looking pretty bleak.
Unemployment, cutbacks and bank bail-outs will never resolve the escalating public debt problem. Nor is it intended they should. This system works just the way it is designed to work: for the benefit of its beneficiaries.
Let us not confuse this with “fiscal independence” and taxation – it has little or nothing to do with it – it is monetary policy.
There are other monetary policies, of course there are, but without the political will to change.
Ronnie Morrison
Colquhoun Street
Helensburgh