Letters: September 2, 2016

Anonymity is granted only at the discretion of the editor, who also reserves the right to edit letters.

What is press’ priority?

IT IS quite remarkable that when a customer tweets about something thousands put up with every day, the owner of that multi-million pound business, supported by many of the country’s national newspapers, vilifies the client!

After privatisation, when trains along the east coast couldn’t make their business pay, they simply walked away and handed the franchise back to the taxpayer.

When we made the service pay, to the tune of £200m, annually out of pure dogma, the Tories privatised the company again.

Now, with both the routes to Scotland under the rule of the same firm we, as taxpayers, are hostage to fortune.

The often quoted Conservative mantra, “Public bad, Private good,” was used during the Thatcher years to sell off public utilities.

It is odd that many European governments have ended up owning them.

So profit taken from our pockets is being invested in other countries’ public utilities. Not our own, we simply have to pay the increased prices.

I suspect that most readers will be unaware that the pylons etc. across the country, the national grid, were once owned by people, but not any more.

As a private firm it made £3.1bn profit last year.

Once this would have gone to support other public services and utilities: now it goes into shareholders’ pockets.

Interestingly, the day after “Traingate”, referred to above, the leader of the opposition tried to launch his party’s vision for the nation’s ailing NHS.

However, the reporters from the media were only interested in bums-on-seats and so however bad, or good, the party’s proposals were, we will never know as they were one-sided.

This does question the priorities of the press. With many of them being supra-critical of the political opposition they are supra-supportive of Tory actions. Two days later and the Government announces that hospitals are to be closed and services restricted, perhaps they should have listened to the Opposition’s proposals.

I fear that whatever the outcome of the current leadership ballot, such is the power of the press that the Opposition will be unable to get their message across.

Then we will be hostages, again, to whatever half truths, evasions and plainly wrong facts that the Tories wish to use to stay in power.

BOB PIXTON

Liden

Swindon

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An interesting history

IT WAS interesting to read Barrie Hudson’s article on the building of Swindon’s first council estate, Pinehurst.

The estate wasn’t just a local initiative but part of a council house building programme under the 1919 Housing And Town Planning Act.

It was the first national programme of council house building subsidised by central government.

It was introduced to try and head off a post-war radicalisation which the British rulers feared.

During the war the Government had been forced to introduce rent restrictions against profiteering rent increases by slum landlords.

The most famous of the rent strikes in Glasgow had forced the Government to act.

The health minister who implemented this council house building programme was Christopher Addison, who was a Liberal MP from Hoxton.

He was a GP who had seen first hand the health consequences of the appalling housing which Barrie referred to in his article. He was the first health minister.

Unfortunately, the programme was abandoned before it was completed although 170,000 homes were built.

Addison resigned from the coalition government and wrote a book Betrayal Of The Slums, which dealt with the housing situation, the legislation and its abandonment.

There is a copy in Swindon Library’s reference section, although the book is available free to read online. Just Google it.

In the book Addison contrasts government expenditure in Mesopotamia and Palestine at 11 shillings and a half-pence a head compared to the princely sum of one and a half pence a head to tackle the housing crisis.

Having broken with the Liberals Addison would become the first Labour MP elected in Swindon at the 1929 General Election.

Betrayal Of The slums is well worth a read, especially for those who have grown up taking double-glazing and central heating for granted.

MARTIN WICKS

Welcombe Avenue

Park North

Swindon

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A big bite out of Apple

THE European Union has demanded an additional 13 billion euros in back taxes from the huge multi-national company Apple.

The low taxes in Ireland are classed as state aid and that is illegal under EU law.

The Irish government insists that Apple has paid the correct taxes and is appealing against this decision.

The EU is the higher authority in this situation and it has the power to overrule all the parliaments of the EU’s nation states.

A much better system for the collection of taxes would be for corporation tax to be paid, where the profits are generated in each individual country around the world.

STEVE HALDEN

Beaufort Green

Swindon

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Here’s how they sleep

TO ANSWER the question put by the comment section in the Adver, in relation to the disgraceful Dial a Ride decision, “how on earth do they sleep at night?”

It is well known that certain species of bloodsucker are most active then – sleep is not necessary.

GUY GREEN

Old Town

Swindon