Dear Editor,
Sadly, I read more reports about low pay and high unemployment in our
region. It is vital that our politicians and businesses work together to
provide more jobs and better pay for our workforce, but this issue goes deeper
than this.
We must make people’s pay go further, there are many ways of doing this.
For example; those earning the minimum wage should not pay a penny in income
tax. We must ensure that people can feed and house themselves on a full time
job. It’s absurd that people are working all week but still can’t pay their
bills and some even have to use food banks to feed their families. Where is the
incentive to work if a basic salary can’t even provide for your
children?
We must reduce the cost of living – eg. reducing energy bills by securing
a stable energy supply and removing expensive wind farm surcharges from
everyone’s energy bills. We can reinvest money wasted by pointless quangos and
mismanaged foreign aid (recently given to not only corrupt governments but also
nations with space programmes) into our local community to further drive
investment, infrastructure, jobs and wages.
Jonathan Arnott MEP
UKIP, North East
