LETTER: Coalition Govenment out of touch with reality

Forget how they are privatising the NHS, setting up political police commissioners, cutting the numbers in the armed services and replacing the shortfall with Territorial Army members, making police redundant and replacing them with community support officers. Forget all of the above. We now have their latest idea – 12 months maternity/paternity leave.

We who live in the real world know there are groups of people in this country who regard new infants as an annual crop to enhance their weekly income. The present baby boom, which is exploding to the level last reached in 1971, will cause immense problems in the future is entirely due to this culture.

What this new approach proposes is that the father or the mother can take a year off work and receive paternity pay. The people who have the above approach to the welfare state also have the wit to see the advantages of the proposal now being considered. Realising this means if they have a child each year it will mean that one of the family can be off work on benefits for as long as the mother is fertile.

All they need is a friend who has a business to give the wife a job for about eight months or how long it takes to conceive. They will then have an income from the state for about 15 years and with family allowance will receive an annual increase. The families of these people will then follow the same practice.

What chance have the small businesses? They are only going to employ people who are over the child bearing age and we are going to have severe overcrowding on our small island.

The politicians who make these decisions are the same people who travel on trains with second class tickets in first class carriages to avoid mixing with lower classes who elected them. If they would sometimes travel in second class, they would learn that we may be poor, talk differently and sometimes not be as well dressed, but our brains are just the same size and we can be just as devious as them.

FRANK NEAL

Folly Lane, Barnoldswick