Lordly words (From The Argus)

Lordly words

You know there must be an election in the offing when Lord Bassam of Brighton makes a rare foray back into the local political scene (Argus Letters, February 4).

Lord Bassam’s defence of the Government’s economic record beggars belief – what it boils down to is: Gordon Brown got you into this mess, so please trust him to take you out of it again.

This is the self-same man who said he’d abolished boom and bust, has given us the longest and deepest recession since records began and said we were the best-placed country to deal with the global downturn. In any other walk of life, he would have been sacked for incompetence a long time ago.

Let us be clear – the reason all parties are having to talk about spending cuts is the diabolical state of the public finances caused by years of Labour’s misguided mantra that throwing billions of pounds of money at a problem will somehow solve it.

Here are some sobering figures for Lord Bassam to get his head around: Every five seconds, the Government borrows more than the average British person earns in a year The annual spending on debt interest is currently equivalent to our entire defence budget.

This year, we will borrow almost 14% of our GDP – almost twice as much as when we nearly went bust in the 1970s (under another Labour Government).

More companies have gone bust in this recession than in any other recession since records began.

And as for criticising the Conservatives for wanting to reduce this colossal debt as quickly as possible – as any family with a credit card will tell you, the more we spend and the longer we wait to pay off our bills, the worse it gets.

Does Lord Bassam’s appearance back on the local scene have anything to do with him potentially losing his gold-plated Minister’s salary after May 6?

I couldn’t possibly say, but what is clear is that by urging us to back Gordon Brown, he has clearly lost touch with the best interests of Brighton and Hove’s residents.

Councillor Mary Mears
Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council

I note Steve Bassam (Letters, February 4) says Labour will cut over the next four years the £178 billion budget deficit they’ve run up by cutting waste. Like myself, I imagine other readers of The Argus would be interested to know how much tax payers’ money the Government has, over the past 12 years, wasted on “ermine” alone? Perhaps the noble Lord can enlighten us?

Dave Bonwick
Oakdene Close, Portslade