LETTER: No politicians with stature to tackle current problems

The letters to your paper from Peter Pike become more bizarre as the years go by. In his latest, it is amazing he is still harping back to Mrs Thatcher, even though it was many years since she was in power. Since then we have had years of Blair and Brown, more on them later.
By The Newsroom
Published 14th Aug 2012, 16:25 BST

Politicians have selective memories of history. Let me remind Mr Pike that when Mrs Thatcher came to power, we had had the three-day week and I well remember working by candlelight in my office in Burnley because of strikes, bodies piled up in mortuaries and rubbish piled up by the roadside. Mrs Thatcher sorted all these problems out, so when Blair took over, our economy was in good shape, with lower levels of debt and a favourable balance of payments.

Blair and Brown introduced a light-touch regime for banks and borrowed money at an alarming rate. The result was financial chaos, enormous debts and the loss of one million manufacturing jobs. The legacy of Blair and Brown will take many years to put right. We are still seeing far too much waste in public services, such as the NHS and welfare. The scandal of public service pensions has not been satisfactorily dealt with.

Unfortunately, we do not have politicians in any party with the stature and ability to tackle the problems we have. We are in for a prolonged period of economic turmoil.

F.W. BIRCH

Related topics:PoliticiansBurnleyNHS