Politics

The coalition Government is rightly planning to reduce public expenditure to halve this deficit in four years.

At the same time, however, it is planning to spend huge sums on two very expensive and unnecessary projects.

The new high-speed rail link between London and Birminghham will cost £33bn and cut the journey time from 80 minutes to 60 minutes.

That is a lot of money to spend on reducing the journey time by 20 minutes.

The Government also wants about 25,000 wind turbines to be built, mostly off-shore, at a cost of up to £200bn with another £100bn to be spent on modifying the National Grid to utilise the intermittent supplies of electricity from the wind farms.

Numerous gas-fired, CO2- emitting, stand-by power stations will also have to be built, continuously in operation, to maintain supplies of electricity when wind speeds are too low, too high or non-existent.

This will double the price of electricity in real terms.

Now is not the time for our Government to be planning colossal expenditure on grandiose projects that could be delayed until the economic situation has become clearer.

Jim Allan, Hartlepool.

EN route to the Stadium of Light in Sunderland, I passed a partdemolished Black and Decker factory.

It once employed around 2,500 people, including myself for a year, good friends and family for much longer – thoroughly decent people, and a reminder to Spennymoor residents like CT Riley (HAS, Jan 1) that these jobs, among others, have yet to be replaced.

I’m not having a go at North- East councils. I’m merely stating that they are not in a position to “claim” Tory shires are stealing our money because the Tory shires raise much more money locally than Durham and as such receive much less of a central government grant.

In reality, the Tory councils are not only funding their own services, but they also prop up the North-East with vast amounts of money.

While Mr Riley admires a local art project, my concerns are that, prior to the election, 189 of the top 200 constituencies with the highest number of benefit claimants were Labour-run and the Financial Times made clear that manufacturing had declined under Labour at three times the rate of the Thatcher years.

The clear priority for the North-East is job creation on a large scale and our leaders need to get on with it!

Jim Tague, Bishop Auckland.

JIM TAGUE (HAS, Jan 1) must be sadly deluded if he thinks the previous Labour government bore any resemblance to socialism.

The nearest a Labour government ever got to socialism was the post-war one of Clement Atlee, which was responsible for the: NHS, welfare state, social housing, and the nationalisation of industry etc.

It also managed to achieve all these things with a national debt that was significantly higher than it is today.

As for Winston Churchill, I wouldn’t believe anything said by a man who was in favour of shooting striking miners and sterilizing large sections of the working class.

David Lowdon, Sunnybrow, Crook.

IS David Cameron setting out to be a political super hero?

Before the election he kept bleating on about Britain being broken, which was and is patently not true. The people of this country largely prove on a daily basis how strong, resilient, caring and capable we all are.

Witness how many charities there are for all sorts of great causes, still receiving giving despite whatever happens in our lives.

Now Mr Cameron says the UK could become one of the international success stories of the new decade. Where has he been?

We have for a long time been, and continue to be, just that, as the international accolades we often receive tell us.

None of his Government’s policies have so far contributed anything to the advancement of this country, as they have not so far had time to take effect.

So all the good things happening here are currently down to the Labour Government’s policies and actions in the last two years to April 2010.

This year as he has warned, we will see, feel and suffer what his Government has planned. Then we will see if he can boast of anything a part from wreckage!

Chris Kirk, Brompton, Northallerton.

SOME correspondents have already forgotten the consequences of years of Labour in power.

The current government did not get elected just to punish voters and jeopardise its chances of re-election.

The debt-ridden state it inherited needed to be tackled urgently as our creditworthiness was being called into question.

Without drastic action, our debt repayments could have increased considerably, as happened with other countries.

I expect most people would appreciate the bravery of politicians who face this unpopular task.

We are paying £43bn in debt repayments each year before we even start reducing the deficit, and the imbalance between non productive and productive jobs must be confronted before we see any chance of prosperity.

If we have been living beyond our means, under the previous Government’s encouragement, surely it makes sense to try to rectify these problems, and ignore the despicable talk about strikes from the likes of BL Corrigan (HAS, December 29).

JW Heslop, Gainford, Darlington.

BEFORE the letters start pouring in to Hear All Sides about the 20 per cent VAT rate which came into force yesterday, I checked to see who introduced this tax and when.

It was Edward Heath, the Conservative Prime Minister, in 1973. He also introduced Index Linked Pay which helped many lower paid workers.

The last Labour government allowed our manufacturing jobs to go abroad while allowing a huge influx of immigration and putting up huge buildings using the Public Finance Initiative.

Can the new Labour leader Ed Miliband inform The Northern Echo’s readers just how he would tax the British people, to balance the books?

Or is it not true that he was part of the team that helped to cause the financial mess that we are now in?

Mr Miliband predicts the VAT rise will cause 250,000 job losses, yet his government allowed thousands of our manufacturing jobs to go abroad, crippling the UK economy.

Ben Ord, Chairman, Spennymoor Liberal Democrats