The Reader: Labour’s policies will lead to unemployment

Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn
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4 December 2019
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Having started a business from nothing in 2007, I have worked day and night to keep it profitable, pay our taxes and raise a family on a shoestring budget.

Today we are a small-business employer of dozens of hardworking families, with over 60 staff. We accept responsibility for their wellbeing, and keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table.

What Labour are proposing with their direct attack on entrepreneurs, with increased taxation and shorter working hours, will jeopardise everything that we and our staff have worked so hard to achieve. We will be forced to cut back on staff, staff benefits and the flexibility they currently enjoy.

There is an urgent need for a wake-up call to make people see where these oppressive and catastrophic policies will lead. They will inevitably end in massive unemployment and more suffering for the people.
Ivor Tunley

Editor's reply

Dear Ivor​
Thanks for your letter and congratulations on building your business up over the past decade — many start-ups didn’t survive the rigours of the financial crisis.

It’s true that Jeremy Corbyn seems hellbent on making life hard for business owners of any size. Some of his policies, like requiring cancelled shifts to be paid for, do make sense in our rapidly evolving economy where people’s patterns of work are changing. But it’s distressing to hear you may have to cut back on staff and their flexibility, not least as working flexibly is increasingly seen as a basic right.

When it comes to helping entrepreneurship, the key is for governments to be light-touch. These are businesses often initially run from the kitchen tables and garages of Britain’s most overworked souls, so endless paperwork from regulations and high taxes can stifle innovation. Whatever the next government’s colour, it needs to provide support, but above all let business founders do what they do best: get on with it.
Alex Lawson, Business News Editor

Trump’s worrying stance over Nato​

Donald Trump has a cheek attending the Nato leaders’ summit in London. He has consistently criticised an organisation that has helped keep the peace for 70 years, recently described some of its member nations as “delinquent”, and yesterday publicly attacked another alliance partner’s leader, French President Emmanuel Macron, in equally unstatesmanlike terms.

Sadly we are used to such boorish behaviour from Trump, but what worries me is that the sentiments expressed by him denigrating Nato — an alliance that rightly keeps Russian ambitions at bay — are straight out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook.
Winnie Dillon

Here to help over death of your pet​

For 25 years, the Blue Cross has been helping pet owners who are devastated after the loss of their pet.

Be it through death, relationship breakdown or theft, during this Grief Awareness Week we want to reassure pet owners that we completely understand. Pets are a treasured member of the family and their loss can be overwhelming. Anyone struggling to cope can contact our pet bereavement support service seven days a week throughout the year, including Christmas Day.
Diane James, Pet bereavement support service manager, Blue Cross

Johnson won’t fix it for the country​

The country faces a stark choice in a few days: to pull back from a Brexit that mounting evidence shows will hasten the collapse of the NHS and the disintegration of the Union, or to sacrifice the country’s wellbeing on an altar of “we had a referendum in 2016”. Can 17.4 million people be wrong? Absolutely: just look at the viewing figures Jimmy Savile used to get in the Eighties.

Now we are being presented with Boris’ll Fix It, and another blond-haired egoist with a penchant for jogging being given the master key to our future. It will all end in tears.
Mike Shearing

Jeremy Corbyn’s position on the EU — that he would negotiate a new and better deal on Brexit — is ludicrous. It has taken months for the EU to even agree on a revised deal, while the suspense has already impacted on the nation.

And then he suggests another referendum. This shows no guts, no keeping of promises, no decisions. Is he trying to make a fool of the British people?
Angus Walker

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