THERE is less than two weeks to go to the General Election yet, amid the welter of literature received, policy statements and debates, there's been little offered on the key issue of the reform of Parliament.
Recent history has shown a widespread disaffection with the current form of our Parliament, its hidebound attachment to traditions and trappings which belong in earlier centuries, and its resulting distance from citizens and the electorate, those it is there to serve.
If the structure of Parliament is not adjusted and improved, then its functioning will not be as it should be.
There has been a proposal from the SNP for the abolition of the House of Lords, clearly necessary, but no proposals as to how a new, second, revising chamber might take shape. However, this represents the beginning of a more constructive attitude towards Parliament from the changed devolved administration at Holyrood, compared to that adopted between 2007 and 2014.
There has been little yet from other parties.
A major part of the shift in voting intentions and realignment of previous allegiances to political parties and movements has been this continuing disaffection, which I share.
There is time yet for all candidates to come forward with ideas for change and continuous improvement.
Let's look forward to this happening.
John McAleer,
JPM Consultancy,
24 Clelland Avenue, Bishopbriggs.
SURELY I am not the only person who feels "dirty" after being bombarded with the pre-digested party pap spouted by politicians on TV and in need of decontaminating my brain cells with the soapy water of reality? Do you find yourself shouting at the telly when reporters seem to seek out Rab C Nesbit clones whenever they want to canvas the opinion of Scots? I fume at politicians gazumping each other with promises to raise the minimum wage, the same politicians who have previously pleaded impotence in this matter since the rate is decided by the supposedly apolitical Low Pay Commission.
I would prefer the truth no matter how unpalatable it is: if Ed or Dave or Jim or even Nicola wer to tell the truth about the minimum wage and say that last year £11 billion of government borrowing was spent to boost the wages of those employed on the service sector because their wages are too low to support them and their families. Why don't they tell us that lowly paid employees of Tesco for instance (a company by no means exceptional in this matter) receive state benefits equivalent to 60 per cent of the corporation tax that Tesco pays the Treasury? Effectively Tesco gives it with one hand gets it back with the other, allowing it to pay larger dividends to shareholders. Now. I can understand how this mechanism is good for shareholders but how it helps the nation or the taxpayer escapes me. I can't understand why the minimum wage is not increased to render this bureaucratic shuffling of money unnecessary.
Successive governments appear to believe it's OK for the nation to borrow money from failed banks propped up with taxpayers' money to subsidise a low-wage society where the working-poor are subsidised by the same tax-payers simply to boost dividends for shareholders in companies who pay low wages. When I hear a politician explaining the rationale behind that pathway and one who promises to do something about it then perhaps I will stop shouting at the telly and washing my brain out with reality detergent.
David J Crawford,
Flat 3/3 131 Shuna Street, Glasgow.
IT seems that the Unionist parties are determined to turn the approaching election into a re-run of the referendum campaign.
We now have Conservatives encouraged to vote Labour; Labour supporters invited to vote Liberal-Democrat and Liberal-Democrats, as ever, willing to vote for anyone. All of this is to prevent the SNP being in a position to persuade Westminster to embrace change and to end austerity.
After two years of watching these parties campaigning side by side, I suppose one should not be surprised by the new political reality. But as their ramshackle political troika trundles unsteadily down a pathway paved, not with good intentions, but with a blatant desire to cling to old powers, I find it frankly shameful and embarrassing.
Peter Craigie,
97/10 East London Street, Edinburgh.
I HAVE now received three A3-sized Labour Party leaflets for the general election. All of them have been printed in the South of England. If Jim Murphy is so dependent on getting his leaflets printed via his London head-office, what does this say about Scottish Labour's much claimed patriotism or its support for Scottish printers.
Nick Dekker,
1 Nairn Way,
Cumbernauld.
WHILE reading Memoirs of a Private Man (2003) by Poldark author Winston Graham, I was startled to read his observation: "There are people, too, whom I describe as psychological bed-wetters, who are for ever making little puddles of trouble that they think they can't help." For some reason, populist politicians - north and south of the Border - uttering weasel words through rictus grins sprang to mind.
Duncan McAra,
28 Beresford Gardens,
Edinburgh.
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