With so much discussion about the plight of the poor (“It’s shameful that so many go hungry in our wealthy country”, leader), the Labour party needs to consider how to make the opinions of the poorest and the youngest in our society count. The Audit of Political Engagement in 2010 by the Hansard Society showed for example that 69% of the AB social group but only 39% of the DE group were likely to vote and that 73% of ABs but only 38% of DEs showed an interest in politics. Of equal concern is that only 27% of our 18-24 age group, compared with 70% of those over 70, are likely to vote, yet many of these under-24s are struggling to find good jobs. The most certain way of improving these percentages is to make voting compulsory, yet this option has received almost no discussion. If the Labour party intends to institute a constitutional commission, discussion of this issue should be given a high priority. Dr Simon Harris Wrexham “The glue that once held us together and gave life to our communities is gone.” Your leader argues that this statement from Feeding Britain, the report from the all-party parliamentary group on hunger and food poverty, is wrong because we are still charitable. Margaret Thatcher believed that we needed the poor: how else could we show our charity? A twisted creed if ever there were one. The glue that should hold us together is a belief in a public realm, an inimical faith for the neoliberals who currently govern our sad state, which, as Will Hutton writes, they are intent on hugely reshaping (“Yes, we can reshape the state – if corporations pay more tax”, Comment). John Airs Liverpool Will Hutton writes that “arguably the state is paying part of what should be workers’ wages”. There is no argument! Taxpayers are now paying an extra £900m in tax credits to ensure that the low paid survive. How ridiculous that this happens so that companies can maximise their profits, pay executives huge bonuses and collect “yet more cash for dividend distributions” to shareholders. Adding to the absurdity, companies in the UK get rewarded for their greed by this government, with corporation tax reduced to 21%, a full 19 points below the rate in the US. Hutton is optimistic about the effects of the recent “Google tax”, but he did not mention George Osborne’s announcement on Northern Ireland. Despite the finance ministers of Germany, France and Italy stating that “the lack of tax harmonisation is one of the main causes allowing aggressive tax planning”, yet again we see, in John Cridland’s words, another example of Britain “going it alone” by apparently allowing Northern Ireland’s corporation tax to match the Republic’s at 12.5%. Does not the “variety of tax regimes” in the “international system” play into the greedy hands of tax-avoiding companies and their advisers in the “big four” accounting firms? Is it not time for action against tax avoiders to be taken in concert with our EU colleagues, rather than in opposition to them? Sensible and similar rates of corporation tax would be a start. Bernie Evans Liverpool William Keegan exposes a central lie in the coalition’s justification of its failed economic policy (“The deficit isn’t the real problem. The crisis is in productivity”, Business). To justify that lie, they peddle another also swallowed by the media: that a government is like a household because it cannot “max out its credit card”. But Osborne himself boasts about paying off First World War debt, so our government can support long-term indebtedness and it can also issue its own currency, neither of which a household can. So government and household financial constraints are very different. Keegan is wrong though to claim we “needed austerity after the Second World War because the country was broke”. In fact, the authorities then focused on employment and economic expansion to reduce the debt. The approach was completely successful; within only two years, the debt was heading down and the wartime production and employment gains were preserved and extended through to the 1970s. They had “spent away” the debt. David Murray Wallington, Surrey theguardian/theobserver/2014/dec/21/big-issue-labour-priority-poor-voice-compulsory-voting?CMP=twt_gu
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 07:53:44 +0000
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