Jeremy Corbyn should look to Scotland before promising to abolish tuition fees

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Saturday 13 May 2017 18:07 BST
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The leaked Labour manifesto promised to abolish university tuition fees
The leaked Labour manifesto promised to abolish university tuition fees

Jeremy Corbyn is to scrap education fees once in power. Can I just get him to look over the border to Scotland to see just how this affecting us here?

Scotland has a deficit of around £15bn which, on a population of roughly 5.5 million people, is staggering. This figure is not solely because of our free education (we get free medicines as well) but goes a long way toward this disastrous figure.

Corbyn has to realise that when he went to university (he attended for one year before dropping out), only a tiny fraction of the UK entered higher education and those attending took meaningful degrees which were worth the paper they were written on. Fast forward to now when, under a Labour government some years ago, it was deemed that at 50 per cent of youngsters should enter university, many obtaining Mickey Mouse qualifications.

How is the UK possibly going to afford this as well as everything else Corbyn has lined up for us? Surely the poor old corporation tax isn't going to used again? If so, that must be about the sixth time!

Fiona McKemmie
Glasgow

Everyone has a voice in Parliament – except for the Speaker's constituency

At the last Prime Minister's Questions, Theresa May said that every person in the county should have representation on the floor of this house.

Except in Buckingham constituency that is, where we do not have someone on the floor of the house to ask questions or vote on our behalf, and we haven't had anybody for the last 10 years or so since John Bercow became the Speaker of the House.

Why do the good people of Buckingham have put up with this totally undemocratic situation? Where we have no representation on the floor in Parliament and nobody is standing against Bercow in this general election, so we effectively have no vote ?

When someone becomes Speaker they should give up their constituency, not least so that their constituents have proper democratic representation on the floor of the House and someone who can ask probing questions of the government of the day.

Michael W Cook
​Buckinghamshire

Big Brother would approve

George Orwell coined a word to describe politicians’ use of words and phrases which meant the opposite. He called it "Newspeak". There can surely be no better example than the Tories use of "Strong and Stable". I have never known a more unstable time for the UK. The Tories gave us a referendum with no plan to deal with a Leave vote. We now see a very real possibility of high inflation, a collapsing economy, the loss of Scotland, the shutting down of opportunities in Europe, a heartless government. Theresa May is only making a bad situation worse. “Strong and Stable”, she must be joking.

Bob Croxford
Helston

Holyrood has made the right decision on animal circuses

Much respect to the Scottish government for listening to the public and introducing a bill to ban travelling circuses from using wild animals. In 2017, everyone knows that captivity is a living hell for animals like tigers and lions and that a circus environment in particular can't possibly meet their complex needs. These animals are understandably frustrated, stressed, and depressed from a lifetime of being denied the opportunity to act on their most basic instincts – kept caged in trailers travelling around the country or being forced to perform painful tricks under the big top out of some Victorian-era sense of amusement.

Let's hope the progress in Holyrood serves to light a fire under the government in Westminster, which, despite years of promising to bring in a ban, continues to sit back and do nothing as England falls further and further behind the growing list of countries putting a stop to these cruel institutions.

Jennifer White – Peta

Blame game

I watched the news of the NHS cyber attack unfolding on all the major news channels and was surprised, to say the least, that no government minister was being asked to account for how they allowed this situation to arise on their watch.

By contrast, the leader of an opposition party is, apparently, wholly responsible for the Brexit vote.

Gerard Bell
Sunninghill

Hunting Act protects hares as well as foxes

A Conservative repeal of the 2004 Hunting Act would accelerate the demise of our iconic brown hares, already listed in 2011 for potential extinction by 2050. One-third of the hunts (with dogs) in England and Wales target these declining hares, not foxes. The act also outlaws hare coursing but a repeal would further encourage this intrusive and destructive activity, already so distressing to farmers and problematic to police forces countrywide. The police would, as a result of repeal, have reduced legal powers against the coursing perpetrators.

John Rimington – Hare Preservation Trust
Leighton Buzzard

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