Living wage but what about OAPs?
LAST week you reported the level of cuts that the first Mayor of Bristol will be forced to make.
Then we read a list of uncosted promises made by Labour candidate Marvin Rees in an apparent attempt to pull the wool over peoples' eyes and get their votes.
People are suffering badly from Labour's ruination of the economy and have proved beyond measure that not only have they learnt nothing, but that voting for them will land us straight back into the same mess of spending more than we earn, incurring huge debts and bankrupting the economy.
Malcolm Cupis
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I NOTE Labour's candidate Marvin Rees and Lib Dem Cllr Jon Rogers, both mayor of Bristol hopefuls, are singing from the same songsheet regarding setting a minimum wage for local employees of £7.20 an hour. Should either of them be elected Mayor, guaranteeing workers a minimum pay of about £275 for a flat weeks work, with a working couple in the same household having a combined income of approximately £550 a week, with even this wage well below the government's stated amount needed per average household to achieve a reasonable standard of living?
Yet neither Mr Rees or Jon Rogers makes any mention in their manifesto leaflet of a living income for Bristol pensioners, with Labour's Mr Rees stating 'We are living in tough times, and I will give a lead to make sure no one is left behind' in his visit of a 'fairer' Bristol for all residents. And we now learn his so-called living wage for Bristol workers is National Labour Party policy, so much for Mr Rees being his own man.
In Bristol we sadly have thousands of pensioners living on a state pension of about £105 a week. Large numbers of the elderly survive from hand to mouth in hopeless poverty and misery, trying to make ends meet on one of the lower state pensions in Europe. The recent derisory pension increase of £5 a week will be lost to meet higher utility bills. There is little stated interest for low income pensioners from either the Labour, Lib Dem or the Conservatives mayoral candidates in their respective manifestos. They seem to view pensioners as a nuisance in our 'One Nation' society when you cut through their babble and sound-bites from their conference gatherings where Britain's poor are never a priority for discussion.
Struggling pensioners and the unemployed should ask themselves, even if Bristol elected ten mayors on November 15, would it make a jot of difference to their life situation?
Gerald Gannaway
Knowle
MARVIN Rees, a mayoral candidate whom I consider would make an ideal occupant of that office, says: "I will build four thousand homes"
He will surely be echoed by others wishing co-equally to make Bristol a world class city via property development projects.
Their supporting infrastructure however should not be overlooked.
They should all tread carefully lest Bristol becomes a world class 24/7 traffic jam.
It seems already to be approaching that status.
Bernie the Bolt
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