CONGRATULATIONS to John Trickett, MP for Normanton and Hemsworth in Yorkshire, who was the only Labour Party member to vote against Tuesday’s Westminster government Winter Fuel Payment policy, on the grounds of “good conscience”. Will he know now be suspended?
Just as an afterthought, when Anas Sarwar suggested we “read his lips”, can we now think that anything else he suggests will also be bare-faced lies, as was his suggestion that “there will be no austerity under Labour”?
READ MORE: Who is Jon Trickett? Labour MP votes against Government on Winter Fuel Payment
Allan Crosbie of the EIS tackled Starmer at the TUC congress over the two-child benefit cap. Starmer’s statement was that child poverty “isn’t an issue that could be solved just by one adjustment in welfare”. Well listen here, Keir Starmer, it would go a bloody long way to alleviate some of the financial pain and burden families have had to suffer since its introduction in 2017 by your predecessors. You have chosen to continue it.
The Alba party’s suggestion that Keir Starmer is the son of Margaret Thatcher got it just about right.
Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife
LABOUR claim they are the “people’s choice” on 34% of the total vote cast while they happily ignore the majority of voters who did not vote, who are abstentions or as I describe them, “none of the above” voters.
There is something very wrong when a party that only receives 34% of votes cast gains the degree of control Labour now have. I understand Labour are on around 17% of the total votes that could have been cast.
Labour are clearly not the “people’s choice” but a minority choice, of what was hoped to be the lesser of two evils.
READ MORE: Keir Starmer refuses to come clean on Winter Fuel Payment cut
Yet in the corrupt system which is the Westminster parliament, their leader as prime minister has unlimited power and uses it to increase the wealth of the few and not the many.
The failure of the UK economy has been variously blamed on “work-shy Brits”, benefit scroungers, wage increase claims, the EU, immigrants and now the cost of keeping pensioners – already on the lowest state pension in Europe – warm, but never the eejits who hold the actual strings of the UK economy at Westminster or the excessive profit-taking by multinationals.
If all these scions of the current fatal strain of capitalism would just read Adam Smith’s On the Wealth of Nations they would understand that monopolies, trade restraint, wage restraint, and government custom control intervention are all an anathema to free trade and wealth creation. The truth is that Starmer and his backers have no interest in the wealth of this nation, they are just interested in garnering ever greater wealth for themselves and their backers, like King Croesus, as the usual vultures hover over NHS England.
Sadly nothing will change while there are still too many Scots trapped in the Stockholm syndrome of Unionism.
Peter Thomson
Kirkcudbright
WHY is every SNP MP not on TV at moment not only complaining about Labour voting through the stopping of Winter Fuel Payments but also pointing out how utterly disgraceful is it that in a country brimming with renewable green energy we will have pensioners unable to heat their homes this winter? Why are the SNP not all over media pointing out that if Scotland was independent it would have the cheapest energy in Europe?
Surely energy should be an open goal for the SNP! Instead we get the BBC relentlessly flogging their programme on former first ministers and associated SNP infighting. Surprised they didn’t wait until 2026 to show it!
Colin T
Largs
I WRITE this beset by an equal amount of raw emotion and downright anger. On Tuesday night, a once proud political party founded on the basis of helping the working class, the sick and disabled removed the Winter Fuel Payment officially from the very people they said would die if the Tories took it away.
These are the people who were the bedrock of the UK and who paid their taxes and worked hard all their working life. The Chancellor could have acquired this money from a number of different places without any trouble at all, but made a diabolical political decision to put millions of old people into trouble this winter. Apparently she thinks we can all afford the high energy prices as we are all well-off!
READ MORE: 'Contact your MSP': Scottish Labour MP shirks responsibility over cuts
The Labour party died on Tuesday night and I for one will not be mourning its passing. Rachel and Keir Scrooge have in my opinion made certain the Tories will be back in after the next General Election. There are many of us who will never put an X in a box ever again as we will be in a box of our own.
I turned to the printed media on Wednesday. Naturally, many of them led on this story, but here in Scotland may I direct you to Scotland’s champion, otherwise known as the Daily Baillie or to give it its formal title, the Daily Record. You have to go to page ELEVEN, where you will find a small piece on the vote and a large piece by Sir Keir blaming the SNP for everything he could think of.
It is unthinkable that a daily newspaper purporting to be the champion of Scotland almost totally ignored this crime against humanity that took place in the House of Commons last night. I am too despondent to even think of what this will do to the political situation in Scotland but I am sure of one thing. What happened last night will never be forgiven and most assuredly will never be forgotten.
A very upset Old John
Ayrshire
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