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The Canary is excited to share the latest edition of our letters page. This is where we publish people’s responses to the news and politics, or anything else they want to get off their chest. We’ve now opened the letters page up so anyone can submit a contribution. As always, if you’d like to subscribe to the Canary – starting from £2 a month – to support truly radical and independent media, then you can do that here:
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This week’s letters
This week we have readers thoughts on an MPs expenses scandal even we didn’t know about, Liz Kendall, Mr U-turn, and the Labour manifesto.
Standing up to Liz Kendall
Aasiya Bora is standing for the Green Party in Leicester West against the notorious Liz Kendall.
Kendall has been MP here since 2010 and has done nothing for the constituency. On her leaflet she says she led the campaign to save the children’s heart unit at Glenfield Hospital, this is a lie it was a local man called Steve Score.
Since then Leicester was the longest place in lockdown, no word from Kendall, the ward she purports to live in was a hot spot for most of the time and now has the lowest life expectancy of Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland. Nothing from Kendall. The train line is not even electrified up to Leicester!
There is no need to vote tactically it’s a Labour seat that Kendall was helicoptered into. Labour deserve to lose. Aasiya would be the terrier in parliament that we need but we are mainly self funded. Please advertise our campaign.
Solidarity
Jacky Nangreave, via email
ED: happy to oblige, Jacky – you can support Aasiya’s campaign here.
Starmer’s manifesto: back to the 1970s
Kevin Farnworth, Professor of Social Policy at York University, has a neat technique. He puts Manifestos through a super computer in Berlin which analyses their meta data. By so doing he can compare them to present and past Manifestos.
The 2017 Corbyn Manifesto showed clear similarities to the Attlee and Wilson Manifestos.
Starmer’s Manifesto showed obvious roots in the 1974 Ted Heath Manifesto. Starmer has definitely changed Labour. Unfortunately it is into a 1970’s Tory Party.
Alan Marsden, via email
ED: you can read more about Farnworth’s research here.
Another MPs expenses scandal no-one is talking about?
Rishi Sunak wants to make it harder for people claiming disability benefits. However, MPs get an extra helping of dosh to care for dependents on benefits, presumably this is on top of the individual claiming PIP etc.
WHY? Who knows but the figures below are disgraceful
MPs who earn at least £90k get extra allowances of £6K every year for each dependent on PIP etc, up to a total of three. For example, if they have three dependents on PIP they can claim £18k on top of their salary.
For everyone else on disability benefits if they have LIFETIME savings of £6k then the amount of benefits they can claim is reduced, over £16k and they aren’t eligible for any.
The £6k & £16k have remained static for the general public and have not been adjusted inline with inflation. However, the MP allowance has increased since 2011 up to the £6k.
So why is it that MPs can receive £18k EXTRA EVERY YEAR on top of their £90K+ salary to care for their dependents, whilst people on benefits whose LIFE SAVINGS are LESS than the MPs EXTRA ONE YEAR ALLOWANCE be penalised.
Surely this is one way to start refilling the public purse and to bring a more equal platform for everyone – rather than squeezing those that need the benefits more.
Anonymous, via email
ED: read the parliament briefing on this here.
Mr U-turn
How can we trust a man who U-turns on a sixpence, how can we even believe the Labour manifesto, as it’s ripe for Mr U-turn it may as well be written on toilet paper because as soon as he is in it’s going to be flushed down the toilet.
There are so many how’s and why’s about the Labour leader, incredible he hasn’t already stuck his head up his backside looking for what he can U-turn on next.
David, via email
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