Letters to the editor: Parties have it wrong on growth

 
Animal expression: Tracey Emin with one of the works in her new show at White Cube gallery (Picture: Getty)
7 October 2014
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As a small-business owner, I am left cold by the economic and fiscal policies of all three main parties.

For me, the priority is turning round a state that borrows £115 billion just for the basics. No company could continue to make a loss year after year; nor should the UK. The Tories talk tough on the deficit but promise tax cuts that will do the opposite. Labour talks tough on the deficit but promises budget cuts that will barely pay for a week of borrowing. Lib-Dems want to do it all by tax rises and spurn budget cuts. The reality is that both will be needed to eliminate in the next decade a deficit that is 15 per cent of government spending.

Equally frustrating is the obsession of the three main parties with the NHS and how much more they will spend on it. If the NHS gets more, then the police, roads, schools, universities, affordable housing, etc, get less. A great NHS will only make us healthy — but never wealthy.

It’s time governments woke up to the need to invest in wealth creation, job creation and talent creation if we are stand a chance of cutting the deficit and being a player in the global economy.
Joe Saxton, nfpSynergy

We hear strident calls from Labour and the Lib-Dems for the rich to pay more and more to subsidise the poor. The politics of envy is no way to motivate wealth and job creators.

What’s wrong is not the amassing of wealth but the disparity in pay between the top and the bottom. It is frankly obscene for anyone to be paid more than £2 million a year and equally obscene for someone to be only paid £12,500 a year.

A salary cap linked to profits would not be that hard to structure; there are similar rules to identify incentive bonuses. At the other end of the scale it should be perfectly possible in most cases to arrive at a minimum wage of around £20,000 with allowances for trainees and part-timers.

Business cries that it can’t afford such an increase in basic wages and that good managers will fly overseas if they can’t earn zillions; rubbish. A debate on some kind of wages policy is growing in many countries, including Israel, where I sit on several boards. It is absurd that we spend billions on state handouts to enable the lower- paid to subsist — let’s reduce these and smooth out inequalities directly.
Michael Rosenberg

For years the Lib-Dems were able to research and debate policy in depth, knowing that it was very unlikely to ever have to implement it. When Vince Cable became involved in the process it all changed. Every policy had to be costed, tax cut paid for and tax raise justified. Since entering government the party faithful on the whole accept the need for financial discipline.

Are people prepared to listen to the sensible measures decided by the conference, and advanced by people such as Cable, Ed Davey or Tim Farron, or is the Lib-Dem message getting drowned out by the visceral hatred thrown at Clegg personally?
Nick Carthew

Artistic failure tells us more

An artistic pop star, full of cunning and desperately seeking love. Or at least that’s the story, the Tracey Emin myth.

There’s an animal expression in Emin’s art. Unabashed, she parades her humiliations, and in so doing reflects back the hateful, disowned parts of ourselves. By calling her naive and attention-seeking, we distance ourselves from our own behaviour. (My caveat would be to question how far her work has evolved given huge developments in self-analysis.)

Art fashions have changed, and we now look for the perfectionism of pieces that have taken hundreds of hours to craft. Artists talk about creating such work as “meditation” but meditation is about awareness; this is art in the style of watching TV. There are artists such as Martin Creed and David Shrigley lauded for raw and primitive work — but they do it under the guise of humour, whereas Emin is highly sincere. A way to channel the spirit of her work would be a group exhibition of worst pieces. As artists you can only see the failure, but for me the real value is in those “not good enough” moments, as that is where our true humanness lies.
E Lindsay-Fynn, artist/psychologist

Charities’ vital help for homeless

Councils faced with increasing costs to house homeless residents in B&Bs due to welfare cuts should ensure continuing support of charities that provide real value for money.

We find and pay for rooms with host families for homeless 16- to 25-year- olds and provide mentoring and support to get them back into higher education or employment and off benefits. Engaging with these vulnerable young people at the earliest opportunity is the easiest way to make sure needs are met and other costs such as crime or drug- and alcohol- related treatment are kept to a minimum. We need funding to attract much-needed hosts and offer a more valuable community service than any B&B could provide.
Nici Moran, director, LATCH

Camberwell doesn’t need Bakerloo line

Extending the Bakerloo line to Camberwell is a terrible idea. There are four Thameslink tracks from the Elephant to Camberwell, where the old station could be rebuilt. A 10-minute Thameslink service to Wimbledon and a 10-minute service to the Catford loop would offer Tube-like frequencies. The Old Kent Road needs the Bakerloo extension as it has no alternative services. It must go beyond Lewisham to Ladywell, where the Hayes line only needs a fourth rail laid to be ready for use. Freeing the line to London Bridge from the Hayes trains would provide paths for extra trains from Dartford and Orpington.
Andrew J Rixon

Labour started social cleansing

The Mount Pleasant development follows the social cleansing of Clerkenwell begun by Islington’s Labour council in the Nineties. It facilitated the creation of lofts in former light-industrial buildings and sold off anything that didn’t move for luxury development, with little or no badly needed social housing gained. Clerkenwell went from being one of Islington’s poorest wards to way above average, except on its council and housing association estates. Cllr Murray’s party (Letters, October 2) shouldn’t be let off the hook for its role in starting the job that Boris Johnson seems so keen to complete.
Phil Cosgrove, EC1

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