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No-one voted for Brexit to be poorer

Reference, Patrick O’Shea’s letter of January 31 - Brexit’s a mistake.

He states the obvious in that “whatever deal we get we will all be worse off”. He’s in good company - Christine Lagarde (managing director and chair of the IMF) has also stated “it’s obvious ” and our own Carolyn Fairbairn (Director-General of the CBI) has observed that when high tech jobs in manufacturing industry go, “they don’t come back”.

My own children and 17 nephews and nieces, and partners, in their 20s, 30s and 40s, all agree Brexit’s a mistake.

We are told by our leaders in the Conservative and Labour parties that the will of the people has to be respected - it seems at all costs. Yes, in the referendum, there were some -2% maybe - who voted leave just to make a point to Westminster, and some who would not have understood how modern business and high-tech manufacturing actually functions.

They didn’t vote leave to be poorer.

Since the referendum, sadly a proportion of those of older years, who statistically would have been more likely to vote leave, have died, and now the majority of people in the UK would actually prefer to stay in the EU (albeit the EU is far from perfect). So much for the will of the people.

One of the saddest things about the debate is that the editor judged it necessary to state after Patrick O’Shea’s letter “Address supplied...”

Daniel Pitt, Okus Road, Swindon

There’s always a price

Tycoon Nick Clegg and family have settled into their new £7m sprawling mansion near San Francisco. It is in the most expensive zip code in America apparently. Indeed the property has many luxurious amenities.

Clegg was one of the architects of the austerity measures imposed when Deputy Prime-Minister; the very same politician who once poured scorn on Facebook, fiercely criticising it for, among other things, paying little tax.

Sir Nick is the new vice-president of global affairs for Facebook.

A definition of what constitutes an honest politician springs to mind “an honest politician is one who when he is bought, stays bought”.

As they say, every politician as his price.

Jeff Adams, Bloomsbury, Swindon

Such a failure

Swindon Borough Council should hang its head in shame at the news that 10 brand new homes in Sussex Square, built at taxpayers’ expense, remain unsold and unoccupied. In September 2018 Coun Cathy Martin inferred the homes, which had been completed a year previously, could not be sold due to a delay in BRE providing a certificate under the Code for Sustainable Homes.

What Coun Martin omitted to say was that the application was made after the houses had been completed; the councillor would have known that the assessment process would be much more complex as a result of it being made ‘retrospectively’.

The delay was wholly of the council’s making and resulted in 10 urgently-required houses remaining empty for nearly two years – by any measure of performance that is quite an outrageous failure of management.

Des Morgan, Caraway Drive, Swindon

Smiths fans wanted

I am compiling a ‘people’s history’ of The Smiths, telling their story in the words of fans who saw them live, and I’d love to hear from anyone who saw them appear at Cheltenham Golddiggers in February 1985. I can be reached at iwasatthatgig@gmail.com.

Richard Houghton, Totnes Road, Manchester