Letters: February 18, 2017

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Tax might save NHS...

DAVID Collins asks “Would the public complain if there was a small increase in income tax to assist us in safeguarding our NHS?” (SA 11 Feb).

I am sure readers will remember how in 2002 Gordon Brown increased NI by one per cent which was supposedly ring fenced for the NHS.

I use the word ‘supposedly’ quite deliberately as, for the public to accept any increase in general taxation to pay for the NHS there must be absolute transparency the money collected is actually additional spending to what has already been budgeted; otherwise the gesture would be illustrative of a weak example of tax hypothecation.

Various reports have shown that ring fencing tax revenues for a service, such as health, can reduce resistance to a tax rise, or even generate public support for increased taxation.

A July 2014 poll by firm ComRes found 49 per cent of people would pay more tax to help fund the health service, 33 per cent would not do so, and 18 per cent did not know.

In a Guardian/ICM poll from the same month, 48 per cent of respondents said they favoured tax-funded spending increases in the NHS.

However, a 2014 survey commissioned by think tank Reform found that two-thirds would be unwilling to pay higher income tax to fund the NHS. Ring fencing taxes for services makes the link between taxation and government spending transparent, which can help reconnect voters with the purpose of taxation.

It also gives the electorate a sense of what a particular service costs.

I believe such information is an essential element to being an active and autonomous citizen and ring fencing is a way of ensuring that a key part of that information is available.

Of course, the downside for Government is that ring fenced taxes reduce their flexibility in spending and restricts their power of government relative to the power of its people.

Governments cannot spend earmarked tax revenues any way that they want; they have to allocate those resources in a pre-specified way. Consequently, ring fencing provides taxpayers with in-built accountability for Government spending.

David suggests common sense might be lacking in the decision making – perhaps ring fencing taxation would be a good thing particularly when Government is not trusted to spend wisely, or when its priorities are not aligned with those of the public.

Incoherent thinking by various Government ministers and NHS officials is suggested by David as being part of the problem, I share his view.

Every Government has criticised their predecessors’ attempts to ‘reform’ the NHS and then undertaken their own reform at incredible cost to the service and the public purse

It does seem strange Government is wedded to spending a fixed percentage of GDP on defence and foreign aid and yet shies away from making the same commitment to the NHS.

The question does need to be asked “what is the right level of spending” and can it really be open ended?

In 2017 health spending is budgeted to be £138bn. What does it need to be to meet every possible demand made on its services and are we prepared to accept the cost?

DES MORGAN

Caraway Drive, Swindon

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...but rich don’t pay

SEVERAL Tory MPs, including George Osborne, have persuaded citizens to vote Tory, for the insane reason that the richest one per cent of the population pay 27 per cent of all the income tax paid, so we should all be grateful to them.

But the only reason why one per cent pay so much tax, is the very obvious point that one per cent have grotesquely greater incomes than the 99 per cent, for no good reason.

Tory MPs depend on stupidity of voters to accept this huge social injustice, as a motive to vote for even more of it.

Under this Tory Government, it is true that many of the ‘super-rich’ do not pay any taxes at all, such as Sir Phillip Green, scolded by Mrs May, without the Treasury having any intention of challenging Phillip’s smarmy device to pay zero, which is not available to average citizens.

Or regard the Duke of Westminster, whose £4.5bn of 2008 multiplied to £9.2bn by 2016, but still he paid no death duties, with the blessing of the Treasury.

Only the super rich, who have wealth beyond counting, can escape paying a penny tax to the NHS.

The essential point of this Tory economics is that all the other super-rich, who are presently prepared to contribute taxes towards the NHS and the national good, are being tempted by this Government to ‘invest’ in some rascally lawyers, to invent a similar bogus excuse to avoid paying taxation.

Then they can all copy Sir Phillip, who does not mind being called names, if he is permitted to spend £100m on his yacht, which otherwise could have improved the NHS.

This shameless corruption is only possible because Tory voters consider it to be ‘economic competence.’

CN WESTERMAN

Meadow Rise, Brynna Mid Glam,

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Make yobs clean up

EVERY single day now we are reading about criminal activities of some sort or another; fighting, thieving, robberies, damaging people’s cars and property, people being stabbed or killed, drug dealers, lazy people dumping rubbish etc plus all the bad drivers causing accidents.

Swindon is becoming a very sad place to live in, but if the culprits are brought to court, most times they get let off and told not to do it again, then they are given unpaid community work to do but we are not told what work it is they have to do.

There is one thing that they should all be be made to do, and that is to clean up Swindon.

The council say they haven’t got enough money to pay enough people to do it, so make these convicted hooligans do it, clean up the fly-tipping, get rid of graffiti, collect all the rubbish that’s dropped by thoughtless people, even clean the toilets that the council want to close down.

If they are supposed to be doing this already then they have not been doing a good job of it. Justice is too lenient for these criminals.

J LAWRENCE

Swindon

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Sex crimes bias?

TERRY Reynolds says that I wrote that any sex crimes in Rochdale were down to Cyril Smith and his mates.

In fact, what I wrote was a letter pointing out that all the sex crimes in Rochdale were not carried out solely by Muslims as was implied by whoever wrote the original letter and also implied by Terry.

I note in Terry’s letter that he writes the Muslims are a notorious child sex gang, while those I wrote about are just Cyril and his mates.

He writes that I should read the press more and that I would then know of the the crimes committed by these Muslims.

Oddly, the same day it was announced in the press that the infamous Muslim Rolf Harris was to be retried for four sexual assaults and tried for an additional one. It was also announced that the alleged mass sexual assaults in Frankfurt were completely made up.

Horrible as the crimes of the sex gangs in Rochdale are, the crimes of so called Christian gangs at Dolphin Square and Elm Guest House and those being investigated by the judicial inquiry are just as horrid and more numerous.

I do not accuse Terry, but many writers seem to be more than a teeny bit racist on this issue.

STEVE THOMPSON

Norman Road, Swindon

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Roundabout fiasco

YOU can’t help feeling a degree of sympathy for the hapless Swindon Borough Council and their consultants they rely on for highway engineering, over the latest Bruce Street Bridges fiasco.

Now I always thought you designed a virtual model, tested the model thoroughly, tweaked the model, retested it, then drew it up... and only after all this did you actually put spades in the ground.

But in EA Feb 15th, we discover “Local councillors and traders were keen we looked at ways of making the new Bruce Street junction operate even more efficiently ... yeah right ... council-speak for “It’s a dogs breakfast and we need to completely rethink it” and this is after blowing £8m (£5m of which derived from Northern Sector developers contributions for North Sector Swindon infrastructure.)

Have you also noticed how suddenly they have all become somewhat anonymous, no Coun Dale Heenan’s smiley face to greet us, just a “spokesman” when the news is not so good?

I suppose politicians only want to bathe in the reflection of good news? Where are today’s competent, experienced visionary traffic engineers, the likes of Frank Blackmore and Ray Harper, who designed and built Swindon’s incredible and internationally renowned Magic Roundabout.

They are obviously not working for CM Hill or whoever else the borough now has in tow.

To the Magic Roundabout’s credit this colossus of traffic management has gently passaged 7,000 vehicles an hour since 1971, a multi-ring masterpiece, sometimes imitated, never bettered.

I did hear a rumour that the Borough Highways are about to consider “improving” this iconic piece of heritage traffic engineering. No, no... please NO!

JOHN STOOKE

Haydon End

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Migrants not problem

ONE problem with attempting to engage Ian Hunt (and his like) in rational debate is that when you reply to any point you manage to locate in his letters his subsequent replies suggest he has forgotten what he originally said.

He suggested 850,000 “migrants (were) let into the country last year”, they were given “Nation Insurance documents” (sic) and that they hadn’t proved they were refugees.

All this in a letter which closed by accusing people who check facts of being “muddle headed dim bats.”

The method which generated the number seems to be; take the highest number that some anti-immigrant group has suggested and add 60 per cent. And then forget the numbers of people who left.

The numbers issued national insurance documentation may have had racists salivating at what the tabloid press told them was a conspiracy but the Office of National Statistics spiked that lie.

Finally, the migrants in question were not refugees, so why would they need to prove they were?

For me what is important is that we are seeing the living standards and working conditions of ordinary people being squeezed to make the rich richer. Blaming immigrants for problems caused, not by them, diverts attention and stands in the way of an effective fightback.

PETER SMITH

Woodside Avenue, Swindon