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Don’t mention economy

“What’s the Plan?” asks the Advertiser (Saturday) regarding the Regent Circus end of town.

The previous plan remember was to build a shop, plus a few restaurants and a cinema. Sadly, building a shop failed in its aim; namely to make the area “level with places like Bristol.”

This has led to much head scratching by those who see market forces as the key solution to all problems.

This could stand as a symbol for the UK economy. Many years of austerity mean wages have been cut in real terms while a tiny minority have seen their wealth soar. Services have crumbled. Investment is still almost non-existent, although we occasionally see mini speculative bubbles which cause more harm than good, and conjure up images of the 2007/8 crash.

Any recovery from slump has been historically anaemic and now the economy is flatlining. In the meantime the global economy, upon which whatever previous recovery depended, seems to teeter on the edge. But if there is a plan, it seems to be that the prime minister and colleagues will appear on TV grinning and telling us how exciting everything is, what with all the new opportunities. Thursday’s question time included Minister Helen Whately, alumna of Westminster School, nearly £10K a term, more if you are boarding, who was fairly leaping in her seat at how exciting it all is. Shh. Don’t mention the economy.

Peter Smith, Woodside Avenue

A rollercoaster ride

Have we now become a nation of sadists that seemingly are so oblivious to injustice that we are prepared to vote for our own punishment and demise and that of others around us, as did our population just vote to continue on with underfunded schools, underfunded local councils, privatised utilities and transport operators that rip us all off and provide a shoddy service, and a care system for both children and the elderly that continues to lurch from one crisis to another?

Unfortunately we now have a newly elected PM who is a proven liar which seemingly is a habit so engrained that he even thought nothing of doing so to the Queen during the Brexit hiatus and who also wasted £millions of tax payers money on vanity projects whilst Mayor of London. How on earth could this have possibly happened, as it is hardly inspiring to say the least

The twelve years of deliberately Tory imposed austerity that we have all suffered since the bankers and speculators in the Western capitalist world almost bankrupted our country, and we were forced to pick up the bill, continues unabated. It is if a general election never took place at all, considering the continued discontent being cited on TV news programmes that daily highlight the terrible injustice of food banks, homelessness, Universal Credit, and means-tested work capability assessments and Personal Independence Payment tests that are designed to rob the disabled, the least fortunate, and the mentally ill out of benefits that they should rightly be entitled to under the welfare state.

I dread to think what is now going to happen due to PM Johnson’s fake BREXIT deal that is purportedly worse than that that of PM Teresa May. We have been told by the new Tory Chancellor Savid Javid to expect prices to rise in the shops, and the CBI has warned of job losses.

Therefore it is a sad situation for people that did not vote for this for any of this downhill roller coaster ride yet are now forced along with the rest of us to hang on for grim death during this self imposed white knuckle ride to impoverishment.

Graham Woodward, Nelson Street