Letters: September 9, 2016

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Hypocrisy on the buses

THE Adver recently carried a captioned picture of the town’s two Conservative MPs and a bus operator, all cosied up together.

Examination of the facts show that the MPs are less bus-friendly than they would like to appear.

Since their government took power six years ago it has been responsible for systematically reducing the relief that bus drivers can claim on their fuel. This results in the perverse situation of falling prices for motorists yet rising prices for passengers.

Of course they are following in the footsteps of Mrs Thatcher.

It was her Tory government that deregulated buses.

Until then a company cross-subsidised routes to provide a service the public wanted.

Now an operator can cherry pick a profitable route, resulting in less profit for a multi-service operator to support less used, but essential services.

This was all done, and is still being perpetrated by the Tories, partially to destroy local councils as they operated many of the bus companies, but mostly as they see public buses and private cars in direct competition.

Their dogma tells them not to use drivers’ taxes to support buses.

Hence we have the most recent assault on local buses, this time by the back door by squeezing councils’ budgets so that they are removing their support for services.

At the same time, car usage is increasing and certainly in Swindon, the Tories are doing nothing to enhance the reliability of buses.

In fact, due to their crazy insistence on road layouts such as Whale Bridge, they are making more issues for operators, not less.

Therefore, if our town’s MPs really wish to help the protection of our environment, and “show how easy it is to travel by bus”, perhaps they should try to dissuade Tory Swindon Council from cutting its support for buses and advise the national government against cutting the help on bus fuel.

BOB PIXTON

Liden

Swindon

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Pupils are a credit

REFERRING to the picture in today’s Adver’ of the pupils starting the new school year at Dorcan Academy.

May I say how good it is to see them looking so smart in their new uniforms – ties tied properly to the neck, jackets buttoned by the boys, sensible trousers for the girls?

Well done! Best of all though to see them looking so happy. Keep it up children you are a credit to the school and your parents.

VERONICA GARSIDE

Wharf Road

Wroughton

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All these lefty loonies

MRS May, our Prime Minister seems to have given rise to a monumental left-wing surge by all the lefty loonies.

She, as a person, believed we should remain in the EU but, when the referendum went the other way, was magnanimous enough to accept that result.

That is what the electorate has decided so that is what we, the Government must do. The Labour party however seems hell bent on pulling itself apart and talks incessantly of going for another referendum.To what end?

This is what the EU is known for. Keep having referendums until you get the answer you want. They did this in France and again in Ireland, and eventually they got what I believe was a totally wrong answer. Do all those Labour supporters in the north of Great Britain, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of Brexit, want that? No, it’s the extremism in the Labour movement that is pushing for this. They believe that they know better than their voters and membership. And the political Labour Party now seems full to the brim of them politicians who know better than the supporters – far left extremists!

Meanwhile the doctors’ BMA union has obviously called the forthcoming junior doctors’ strike solely out of political reasoning; to cause chaos and disruption, irrespective of the effect it will have on all the electorate including all patients awaiting treatment.

You only have to look at the leadership of the BMA to see where their leanings are. No serious medical pretensions, but what would appear to most to be a bunch of mediocre medicos who, without a thought of the Hippocratic Oath between them. have gone ahead and called another more serious strike. And, I might add, without a second ballot. Intent only on trying to force the elected government into bowing to their lefty leanings and demands. Don’t listen to the calls by them of unsafe practices! This is a load of absolute rubbish. It’s just trying to force the Government to bow down to a selfish and self-centred request by a bunch of wannabe quasi-left wing politicians. It’s not about safe working principles, no matter what they say.

What is safe about doctors going on strike and leaving patients and potential patients in danger of dying? It would appear to me to be as safe as giving a child a hand grenade to a child as a plaything. It seems to me that most of these doctors at the BMA headquarters are probably mediocre and thus have decided to make themselves important by opting for a quasi-political fringe career.

Doctors have always been looked up to by most of the population as a respected and honourable profession, who look after their patients in a responsible way. All we ask,the general public, is that you keep talking to the Government and eventually reach a mutually-agreeable settlement. Surely that is not too much to ask for.

In my youth – god that was a long time ago – I was a quite militant lefty. But over the years I learnt that it just doesn’t work. The unions left me and thousands of others like me, to be made redundant whilst handing the positions we had vacated to non-qualified labour. All with an intent to bring about a swing to the left. Well it didn’t work in my case. I realised that socialism doesn’t work; that socialists do not understand finance nor business either.

And that socialism drove many companies to the wall, leading to yet more people losing their jobs.

But did this affect these left-wing politicians and union executives? Did they go short or did they lose their jobs? What do you think? Don’t get me wrong – I am not saying the Tories are perfect. Nobody is perfect.

But they do try and create wealth, and thus employment, which is more than Labour has ever done.

So I respectfully ask all these junior doctors to think really hard before taking this giant step and possibly losing the support of the general public.

Once you have lost that support and respect, it’s an uphill struggle to regain it.

DAVID COLLINS

Blake Crescent

Swindon

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Spread tax around

DON Reeve (Sept 6) is correct to complain about the foolishness of making Apple pay all their corporation tax in one EU country, namely Ireland.

He puts forward the excellent idea of a sales tax levied in each country of operation as a far more robust way to make these mighty international companies pay their correct taxes.

Alternatively, corporation tax could be calculated in the same way as it is now, but distributed to the individual countries in relation to the sales that the business has achieved in each country.

TERRY HAYWARD

Burnham Road

Swindon