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The Socialist inbox: letters to the editors, photo Suzanne Beishon

The Socialist inbox: letters to the editors, photo Suzanne Beishon   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Send your news, views and criticism in not more than 150 words to Socialist Postbox, PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD, phone 020 8988 8771 or email [email protected].

We reserve the right to shorten and edit letters. Don’t forget to give your name, address and phone number. Confidentiality will be respected if requested.

Views of letter writers do not necessarily match those of the Socialist Party.


Costings claptrap

Tories say £45 billion of Corbyn’s spending plans are uncosted. That’s an improvement on what we’ve got at the moment. The Tories are currently running a £69 billion annual budget deficit.

Ian Pattison, Leytonstone, east London

Sermon on the May

In the Bible there is a story about five loaves and two fishes. I think Theresa May has adapted this a little. She wants to get five years and then give us two fingers.

An Aslef member, Worcestershire

NHS election?

Save our NHS demo, 4.3.17 , photo Paul Mattsson

Save our NHS demo, 4.3.17 , photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

The election on 8 June is an election on whether we want a public or private NHS, not about Brexit. The Tories want to take our minds off of their vicious cuts. They want a US-style health service – that is, private. If you can’t afford healthcare, go to the back of the queue.

The ‘private finance initiative’ robs the NHS of hundreds of millions of pounds, as do the pharmaceutical companies with their expensive medications. Virgin group is also getting its hands onto our NHS.

These greedy grasping parasitic leeches ought to be thrown out of our NHS. The pharmaceutical companies should be brought into democratic public ownership and integrated into the health service.

The same goes for care homes. £500-plus a week is obscene. A Corbyn-led government will implement things for the needy majority not the greedy minority.

What they are doing to the NHS is shameful and abhorrent. Nobody knows when they might need the NHS so it’s worth fighting for.

It’s true the Blair government started the privatisation programme, but a Corbyn government will reverse it. I appeal to all those who wish to protect our beloved NHS to vote for him in order to preserve it. To lose it is unthinkable.

Bill Buchanan, Nottingham

Energy exigency

Labour spokespeople should stop debating semantics over the Tories’ claim that the Tory proposal to cap energy prices is different to Ed Miliband’s pledge.

There is only one way to end the obscene spectacle of not only private firms and other governments owning companies previously nationalised and using the profits they rip off to subsidise prices in their own countries, but also the never-ending escalation of prices and company profits for which they blame the consumers for not ‘shopping around.’

This is an open goal for Jeremy Corbyn: to declare that the next Labour government will take back into public ownership the entire energy industry. Poll after poll indicates that the majority support this course of action.

Tony Mulhearn, Liverpool

Hot Hunt’s Hotcourses

photo Paul Mattsson, photo Paul Mattsson

photo Paul Mattsson, photo Paul Mattsson   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Very irritating news on the way to the office on Monday morning (8 May) was in City AM, one of the freebee Tory rags for London.

“Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt got a £1 million dividend from his education business before it was sold off earlier in the year. Hunt owned a 48% stake in ‘Hotcourses’, which was sold to ‘IPD Education’ in January. On top of the dividend, the £35 million sale handed Hunt almost £17 million.”

Why would these Tory money-grubbers bother to invest in wealth-creating industries when they can make millions from the desire of working class families for education and extract it from our meagre pockets?

This is the man who has presided over the continuing privatisation of the NHS, and restrictions on wages of the workers who provide the services. How many ministers and other Tories have their grubby fingers in this pie and our other social services? Get them out now!

Keith Dickinson, Shepherd’s Bush, west London

Belts and bumps

“Just tighten your belt a little more while we gift billions to the super-rich.” This demand for austerity is something that we have grown used to hearing from our politicians.

Corbyn’s policies give us hope that we can loosen our belts – an opportunity that comes as a shock to many. For too long, only fat-cat business elites have enjoyed the luxury of undoing their belts. Can we really afford to loosen ours too?

The short answer is: yes! Corbyn has already pledged not to increase the tax burdens on the poorest 95% of the British population, and says he will “take on the social scourge of tax avoidance… and close down tax loopholes.”

As far as the super-rich are concerned, everyone else must tighten their belts – including pregnant mothers. This has led to the intolerable situation whereby unlawful maternity and pregnancy discrimination is growing worse by the day.

In 2015 alone, 54,000 pregnant women and new mothers were forced out of their jobs (double the number of ten years ago). This is why a Corbyn-led government would, for a start, act firmly to get rid of costly unfair employment tribunal fees which literally price people out of justice.

Corbyn’s popular proposals are bringing hope to many and fear to the few.

Mike Barker, Leicester