Sir, In 2010 when the coalition started their sledgehammer attack on people who were receiving benefits, forcing many to use foodbanks and driving some to suicide with the hard line approach with ATOS, their justification was to make work pay.
I would like to see in the last five years how they feel they have achieved that? If myself, being unemployed, took a salaried post with a company with a month’s lying time for wages I would have to make do with a £100 back to work grant from the job centre and an extension of my housing benefit for four weeks leaving me to live from my last benefits payment to pay for food, lighting and heating and all other costs.
I would very likely have to rely on foodbanks. This is hardly an incentive to take a salaried post.
In 2011, David Cameron said he would do something about paying reduced benefits until your first pay to avoid this situation. He has failed to do so.
Interestingly, when labour was in power the exact same options for returning to work were available.
So things have not changed. I hope people will remember this in May.
I know I will.
Gordon Kennedy. 117 Simpson Square, Perth.
Stop this V&A project now
Sir, Please, please, in the name of sanity, stop this utterly mad V&A project now.
Why should we be making people redundant and it’s always the low-paid workers who are first to fall and at the same time continuing to pursue this mad project?
In my view it will become an even bigger financial weight around Dundonians’ necks than the trams have for those who live in Edinburgh.
Why should the cost double? Why should taxpayers as will no doubt be the case end up paying for this project for many years to come?
The money being put into this project could and should be used to increase the numbers of doctors and nurses and teachers in our schools.
In these times of financial constraint money should be spent wisely, so we need to stop this madness now because the costs for this project will almost certainly increase again and again.
I predict today that the cost will, for certain, end up at more than £100 million pounds and that in the end we will lose more jobs than will be created when the V&A is opened, in order to pay for the building.
Dennis Rintoul. 28c Brook Street, Broughty Ferry.
They just don’t understand . . .
Sir, Your correspondent, Roy Moffat (Letters, January 19), perfectly illustrates the profound misunderstanding of Yes voters by those opposed to Scottish independence.
Even if Scotland was “better off as part of the union” a very debatable proposition those of us determined to achieve independence for this ancient nation would gladly accept that challenge.
The difference between unionists and those seeking independence is that the former choose to cling to nanny’s hand come what may, and the latter itch to get to grips with what is wrong with their country and sort it.
If the Baltic States can recover from 60 plus years of the dead hand of Soviet rule and become thriving democracies (with, crucially, a wonderfully revived cultural life and self-respect), then Scotland can certainly reinvent itself as another prosperous north European state, with fantastic natural and human assets and a history and geography to die for.
David Roche. Hill House, Coupar Angus.
There can be no justification for it
Sir, Bob Taylor’s letter on Charlie Hebdo (Courier, January 15) illustrates the perverse pervasiveness of political correctness in claiming that “freedom of expression can never be absolute” in a context that diminishes and obscures that most absolute of actions murder.
Morality must be distorted to an inhuman dimension to see an equivalence between murder and the most abhorrent critical expression.
Any belief is subject to question and should be able to withstand any amount and kind of criticism thrown at it without resorting to killing to prove its worth.
In these times of Islamic radicalism and political correctness good people are reacting, not to the need to defend free speech, but to appease those who would murder to prevent it.
It’s a simple principle, don’t criticise us and we won’t kill you.
As Mr Taylor’s letter shows, it works.
Andrew Lawson. 9 MacLaren Gardens, Dundee.
Put leaders in the spotlight
Sir, I suspect that most of the electorate, like me, find the election debates on TV a waste of time. It may be good enough viewing to let the media think that it improves their ratings, but does it?
Much more informative would be a series of rigorous interviews of each party’s leader, conducted by an experienced political commentator.
We then might discover the real intentions of each party and be spared the sound bites and personal insults.
John Dorward. 89 Brechin Road, Arbroath.