The ‘battered middle’ are losing patience

Congratulations to Bill Jamieson on his excellent comments (Perspective, 18 August). His article could be prescient of much greater protest ahead from the over-governed, increasingly put-upon and taxed-to-the-hilt silent majority of the UK.

I don’t know what the final catalyst will be for the likely mass protest by the reasonable section of our society. For me, it may be the introduction of the state pension reforms detailed by Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

If it is adopted as proposed, all current pensioners will be omitted from the improvements so that my wife, as a mother who stayed at home to care for children, will receive about £60 per week, while a “new” pensioner in exactly the same circumstances will receive about £170 per week. Everyone must have the same treatment, and if the government thinks it can get away with this ridiculously unfair proposal, it is wrong – and has underestimated the justifiable anger that this has caused.

We are told that it is not affordable to make reforms applicable retrospectively.

So, to help, let’s get rid of a complete tier of government and associated bureaucrats – any of the current four could go and we’d see little difference. Or, let’s accept that we are in no way a world power and stop spending such a ridiculous portion of our GDP on so-called “defence”, which the rest of the world sees as blatant interference.

We in “the battered middle” are very near the end of the tether.

David K Allan

Mainshill

Haddington, East Lothian

The single flaw in Bill Jamieson’s article is that he does not specifically attribute responsibility for our economic and financial mess to the 13 years of Labour government from 1997 to 2010, where it belongs.

That government presided over artificially low interest rates. The cheap credit drove retail sales which, in turn, swelled Treasury tax receipts. Add to that increased revenue from more than 100 stealth taxes and Labour’s obsession with public sector borrowing that reached £180 billion by 2010.

All of that fed into higher public spending, with one million more on the payroll, on much higher salaries (100,000 for Scotland). So, it is no surprise that dealing with the debt will result in job losses as their viability is assessed.

 So, after 13 years of Labour, the coalition government is left to pick up the pieces. Its efforts have been criticised at every turn by Labour; how is it that now, in opposition, Labour knows all the answers when it had not a clue in government?

It is in denial about its role, yet that is the phrase it uses against Chancellor George Osborne about his “too much, too fast” remedy, as it describes it.

Labour claims that growth in the economy is needed, but fails to realise that it had effectively purloined the opportunities for any meaningful current growth by exploiting the availability of cheap credit, which it created.

With borrowers continuing to repay these debts, it will be many years before the situation improves.

Douglas R Mayer

Thomson Crescent

Currie