Building schools bluster

Readers with reasonable memories will probably be able to recall the ill-fated premiership of Gordon Brown.

He will be remembered for all the wrong things but with a little unpicking there were many good deeds-swamped by the media's obsession with bod news.

Apart from saving the world economically after the 2008 global financial crisis by buying our banks and universal bus passes (readers may be able to remember more) he instigated a programme called, ‘Building schools for the future’.

One of the pledges was to re-build all the nation’s secondary schools.

The incoming Tory government, supported by the town’s two Conservative MPs, called an immediate halt to this and heralded in over a decade of cuts to public services.

Figures show that while teachers’ pay has yet to catch up with where they were ten years ago, schools have not been able to repair their buildings and it would cost £6.5 billion to get us back to where we were in 2010.

Our two MPs were very keen to say in their leaflets, and weekly columns in your paper, that the Labour party’s Building schools programme was wrong and one shouldn’t spend your way out of an economic problem.

And so we fast forward to today. A Tory government is going to inject £1billion to repair schools and from next year will make available £5billion to replace some old schools.

Now one doesn’t have to be a genius at sums to show that their figures do not even take us back to where we were before their austerity programme.

I am no professor of rhetoric, but to argue against a plan one minute and then to argue for it the next is irreconcilable. However, this perpetuates the reality that this Government has a hall-mark of being big on bluster but lacking in substance.

Bob Pixton

Abney Moor

Liden

Law enforcement co-operation was self preservation

I agree 100 per cent with my friend Steve Thompson that it's good to see that high levels of co-operation between law enforcement agencies in EU states and the rest of the world resulted in the arrest of 750 criminals.

Steve implies this success is due to the UK's membership of the EU. It isn't anything of the sort. The sole reason is one of self preservation and protection, as it benefits every nation state to collaborate in fighting crime. The people have voted to leave the EU.

Des Morgan

Caraway Drive

Govt restriction on freedoms was a failure

The fourth of July when bedlam would be released upon the streets by opening the pubs. What nonsense.

I went to a local well know respected pub owned by one of Swindon’s oldest brewers.

It was well organised, efficient and not packed out.

The Advert has also stated that contrary to the fear factor government predictions .It was all quite on the Old Town Front.

This governments restrictions on our individual freedoms and rights is a total failure and abuse regarding the Magna Carta and true democracy.

That our ancestors fought and died for.That I will never forgive.

When the nightmare of lost jobs comes in due to the tide of incompetence of rule. I suspect many may sadly, join my train of thought.

Bill Williams

Merlin Way

Covingham

Swindon