Sir ,
Councils are struggling to provide services because of Westminster's excessive austerity which Labour supported. To make matters worse, councils and health boards also have to service PFI contracts which Labour forced upon them. The PFI debt exceeds £222 billion across the country and will remain with us for at least another 20 years. Here in the Western Isles, the money collected from council tax payments just about covers the council's PFI bill each year.
In many cases PFI contracts saw facilities purchased for highly inflated prices which will have a relative short life span. We only have to look across the country, and not just Edinburgh, to see facilities which were not fit for purpose.
Labour did nothing about tax avoidance by companies like Amazon. They turned a blind eye to the offshore tax schemes popular with the wealthy. Instead, they chose to tax the ordinary working people to make up any shortfall. We only have to look at how council tax rose by nearly 70% in the relative short time they were in power in Scotland.
Labour want to raise the taxes of low paid workers to pay for their economic incompetence. The low paid are already making massive sacrifices while the fat cats like bankers hardly notice any difference. No doubt some retired politician might tell us that Labour did not create almost one trillion pounds of debt when running the country. He will tell us that "they big boys in Europe made us do it" and that they were not really in charge.
Archie Harper
27 Shulishader
Point
Isle of Lewis
Letter: Labour backed "excessive austerity"
15 April 2016