Readers' letters - July 28

I suggest greed is the reason we are all in the mess we are.

Back in the ’70s, we began to see massive inflation and I guess it was natural that people wanted wage rises just to keep a stable income. Sadly it was the start of an endless spiral.

For every wage increase, an employer had to increase his prices until his business was no longer viable.

As a result it was cheaper to import coal from Russia and clothing from China than to produce our own, businesses folded and workers became the unemployed.

We now own little of our own country – depending on investment from overseas and private companies to provide us with jobs.

Have we learnt anything from this?

Of course not.

Greed leads people to believe they are worthy of massive salaries while half the world is dying of starvation.

Isn’t it time they simply said: “No! I am a multi-millionaire, I don’t need more money!”? The Beeb could put a stop to it by refusing to take part in this scandal. I am positive there are loads of people who could do the job of these so-called celebrities for a fraction of what they are paid. If they want to keep their jobs, take the new pay deal or step aside and let someone else have a go!

The Government is not wrong to put a cap on pay rises. The people earning them are not struggling to survive. They are wondering if they can keep up their standard of living. When will anyone stand up and say: “I am earning enough. I am not going to bankrupt my employer by demanding a higher salary”?

Most of us are being hit by cut-backs to public services that make life less pleasant for everyone, while councils’ biggest outlay is on their employees’ salaries.

When there are none of our people sleeping on the streets, none of our sick going without treatment, none of our children getting substandard education and no families living in substandard housing, when our national debt is cut, when we sell more than we buy – then we can start sharing in our nation’s wealth.

In the meantime, let’s pull together and accept less, take no more than we can use and earn more of everyone’s respect and admiration.

J Allinson

via email

cyber-crime

Need to know? Answer is no

I have been following with interest your series of cyber crime articles (LP, week commencing July 24).

I am always a believer in a ‘need to know basis’ when it comes to personal information being given away.

However, one is then frustrated that such a thing as one’s date of birth is a ‘required field’ to be answered online, yet with little need or justification so to do.

For example, I recently purchased a small kitchen appliance, yet it was a ‘required field’ that I enter my date of birth when registering the product with the manufacturer in order to validate the guarantee.

Just why is such a piece of personal information required?

If I go into my local corner shop to purchase a bag of sweets, I am not asked for my date of birth.

Now I could understand the counter assistant asking me my age if I was purchasing some alcohol or some cigarettes (despite my looks!), but I fail to see why a kitchen appliance manufacturer needs to know the specific date of birth of its appliance users.

Then I realised one possible reason for the appliance manufacturer asking me that question, for, as part of its ‘rewards scheme’, I had to carry out a lifestyle survey.

Yes, you know the sort of thing, from which the manufacturer would sell on my details to all and sundry, and I would be particularly targeted by companies who now knew my age.

I thus declined their ‘rewards scheme’ and, even had I carried out the lifestyle survey, no doubt I would have had all manner of baby products being touted.

Well, the website allowed me to put 01/06/17 as my date of birth.

More fool it!

Another ruse that I use is never to give my mother’s proper maiden name as a security question.

After all, the scammers, using ancestry websites, could easily find out my mother’s proper maiden name, so I use another memorable name in order to throw the scammers off my scent.

Oh, and my name?

Well, that’s also on a ‘need to know’ basis.

Scammers’ Worst Nightmare

via email

farming

Grove wrong on subsidies

I was astonished to hear that the Environment Secretary, Michael Gove, suggests that it is about time farmers started to earn the subsidies paid to them by the state.

Does this man not understand that farmers the world over are paid subsidies in order to produce food for our populations at below the real cost of production?

Without subsidies, the real cost of food would be much higher and unaffordable for a large proportion of our people.

It is ironic that a Tory MP and minister with an obscene salary and huge amounts of benefits, also paid, like agricultural subsidies, out of the public purse, should admonish hard working farmers for not earning their subsidies.

A brief look at House of Commons, in which our MPs supposedly earn their salaries, or should I say subsidies, shows it is almost empty for most of the Parliamentary session.

Where are these MPs who are absent from their place of work on an almost daily basis?

If farmers operated their businesses in a similarly irresponsible and casual manner, this country would be without food.

I am also astounded that a Tory Minister, who I presume is aware that millions of children throughout the developing world are dying of starvation, should require farmers to reduce food production.

To reduce the amount of food produced by increasing the amount of farm land taken out of normal agricultural production to enable beetles, rabbits and weeds to prosper is, in my mind, a genocidal policy which will inflict even more suffering on those poor

kids who are starving to death.

Any reduction in food production anywhere in our globalised world will have catastrophic effect on the starving millions, though I doubt it will affect the fine dining enjoyed by our overpaid MPs in the many restaurants and bars in the House of Commons.

Dick Lindley

Address

supplied

nostalgia

Call for football memories

The Museum of the Fylde at Farmer Parr’s, Fleetwood, is looking for memorabilia, pictures, general artefacts and a few tales and memories connected with the Catforth and District Summer Football League for scanning, photographing or just simply recording.

The pre-1975 period is of particular interest, and we would especially like to find one of the old fixture booklets.

The museum can be contacted through John Grimbaldeston 01772 691017 or [email protected].

Thank you in advance for any help your readers might be able to give.

John Grimbaldeston

via email