SO Starmer and Reeves insist they had to make “hard” decisions, and scrapping winter fuel payments for all pensioners is a “tough decision to stabilise the economy”. I seriously can’t believe I just heard that from politicians from the same party as Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevin.
I’ve got a wee message for Starmer and Reeves – there’s absolutely no need to take such “tough” decisions whatsoever! There are very easy-peasy decisions you can make to fill this awful black hole in the economy. It’s very simple and apparently wee Johnny’s pet hamster thought of it years ago! Read my lips! It’s called taxing the rich, stupid! A really significant tax on the rich would still be loose change to them, to be brutally honest, and wouldn’t even touch the sides, as they say, so what the hell’s the problem?
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I’ll tell you what the problem is. There is a ginormous conspiracy going on right now between political parties in the UK and the press and media to stay absolutely schtoom about any possibility of a wealth tax. Let’s face it, Starmer and Reeves are feart of the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and The Sun. If they properly taxed the owners of these newspapers and their filthy rich pals there would be an almighty backlash, and any negativity Labour currently get from these publications would pale into insignificance if they had the temerity to introduce a wealth tax.
It would be an almighty barrage of opprobrium, copied in telly media, and would severely be detrimental to Starmer’s government. So the easy way oot is tae hit poor pensioners just above the threshold for being entitled to pension credit, coz they cannae dae the same damage tae Labour that Rupert Murdoch and his chums can. It’s so bloody depressing!
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Unfortunately, and I totally understand it, the SNP Scottish Government had to copy this policy in Scotland due to the Barnett consequentials. Predictably, already the “Scottish” versions of the previously mentioned right-wing rags and Scottish telly news are blaming the Scottish Government for this, not the UK one, for not planning their finances diligently, blah, blah, blah! I haven’t a clue how many pensioners in Scotland this has detrimentally affected in a meaningful way, but I definitely reckon many of them would have voted Labour on July 4.
Will they be totally disgusted at the betrayal of the party they voted for and switch to the SNP in 2026, or will they believe the papers they read and the telly news they watch and stick with Labour again, blaming the SNP, yet again? All I can say is that the SNP don’t have the humongous advantage of blanket propaganda from the right-wing press and telly news, which the vast majority of these pensioners read/watch. It’s so bloody depressing!
Ivor Telfer
Dalgety Bay
THE media has rightly been awash with comments from SNP supporters, members, MPs and MSPs attacking Labour MPs at Westminster for voting to means-test pensioners’ Winter Fuel Payments.
Given their combined level of apparent anger about this decision, a reasonable person might expect SNP MSPs in Scotland’s parliament to completely reject this policy. However it seems when faced with the alternative choice to tax the super wealthy via a land tax they have decided to simply implement UK Labour’s policy and, in effect, tax the pensioners. Austerity always seems to work from the bottom upwards now, even in some SNP minds.
If we are not very careful, two fundamental questions will start to form in the minds of the Scottish public – what is the point of the Scottish Parliament when it simply serves to do the work of the UK Westminster Parliament, and what is the point of continuing to vote SNP?
Brian Lawson
Paisley
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