If artists miss out, how about pensioners and patients?
Last updated 09:19, Friday, 10 October 2008
MY HEART bleeds for those poor young English artists whose sign was desecrated and who must continue starving in their garrets (The Cumberland News, October 3). n THE only sad thing about the Welcome to Scotland sign erected as a ‘work of art’ south of Carlisle being vandalised was that somebody beat me to it.
They should understand, however, that they are not alone in feeling hard done by.
Thousands of English cancer patients are denied life-prolonging drugs which are freely available in Scotland.
Similarly, English university students have no option but to rack up huge debts while those in Scotland study free.
Many English pensioners will be forced to choose between eating and heating this winter while in Scotland last year all pensioners, regardless of income and wealth, received a free central heating system.
Soon prescriptions in Scotland will be free, those in England currently cost £7.10.
The list goes on and on – and the politicians like to pretend that we are a United Kingdom.
All this is courtesy of the Scottish-dominated UK Government which allows the gravy train known as the Barnett Formula to rumble unhindered across the border, carrying tax revenues raised in England to be used for the benefit of Scotland.
In the last 20 years, under this iniquitous scheme, Scotland has received an extra £100 billion in funding. No wonder they can afford goodies for their pensioners and students – not to mention struggling artists.
Our young artists are to be congratulated for highlighting this scandal, which will not be halted until England, like Scotland, has its own Parliament. I hope they will join in the call for justice for England.
ANNE PALMERStaplefordTawneyEssex
There has been an onslaught against England going on for over 30 years.
In 1974 Monmouthshire was stolen from England and dumped in Wales by the worst prime minister England has ever endured, Ted Heath.
Last year I stood in the Welsh Assembly elections for the English Democrats on a policy of offering the people of Monmouthshire a referendum on returning to England, only to be met by a media blackout.
I argued with BBC radio news that if we were a Scottish party campaigning to steal Berwick-upon-Tweed from England, the BBC would be all over us like a rash.
My assertion was proved right earlier this year when a spurious poll, supposedly showing that 70 per cent of people in Berwick wanted the town to be Scottish received national coverage, whereas a poll run by Berwick’s local paper, showing the opposite, was ignored.
Cumbria and Carlisle are now the targets.
Cumbria has suffered due to both Labour and Tories.
It is now the poorest part of the UK while Scotland receives billions of English taxpayers’ cash.
Cumbrian residents voting for either of these parties ought to question their sanity.
It is Scots like Brown and Darling, aided and abetted by their northern English sycophants like Eric Martlew, who have overseen Carlisle’s, Cumbria’s and the north of England’s devastating decline since devolution, while Scotland has prospered.
Brown and fellow Scots couldn’t care less about English people, including those living in Carlisle.
STEPHEN GASH St Augusta View Carlisle
