Liberal viewpoint – Dorset Echo

I OWE my undying gratitude to Clif Moreton (Bring Back Sanity, Letters, July 12) for his erudite description of my liberal thinking. I should be more like him.

If I had realised much sooner in life that people like me are at the heart of many of the countrys problems I would have lived in a cave.

His sweeping statements about others points of view are precisely what he accuses Barry Tempest of. He generalises that liberal-minded people are incapable of putting their own country and its people first. The alarming thing about him in particular and Brexit in general, is that its foot soldiers are fuelled by an incomprehensible, emotive and irrational driving force. There is no substance to Brexit claims, just suppositions and rhetoric.

We have Theresa May, who hypocritically preaches about benefitting the many not the few, herself knowing that she Maydo do this and Maydo that. Shes in charge of Brexit aided by a bunch of spoiled rich boys with no real experience of life outside networking inside the Westminster bubble.

They have already reaped havoc on the impoverished in wealth, mind and body. Its like giving Jack the Ripper the keys to an infirmary.

Surveys show that in retrospect, successful companies decisions only turn out to be about 50% beneficial. Failed companies differed (note past participle) in that they were afraid to change their minds. Not much chance for us then with them firmly keeping our heads in the gas oven?

Turning to Clifs next door neighbour Jon Coombes (Critical lens on EU, Letters, July 13), we are already battling against our own home-grown forces of neoliberalism.

He clearly needs to visit Specsavers. Its either his myopia or choice of the Daily Mail for news that is preventing him from seeing what is going on in his own backyard. There is already a sea of discontent and action against austerity and neoliberalism.

Wikipedia says Neoliberalism.includes economic liberalisation policies such as privatisation, fiscal austerity, deregulation, unrestricted free trade. Has Jon forgotten how our and USAs banks and their deregulated capitalism caused a catastrophe in 2008?

Incidentally, it wasnt the EU that caused Italys problems; it was the Mafia and being stuck to the Euro rate of exchange. Actually, far from being the fount of neoliberalism, the EU has a much more effective way of preventing its extremes than the UKs First Past The Post electoral system. Its called Proportional Representation.

Liberalism balances economies between both state and private interests; a 50/50 division of a countrys GDP is common in the EU. Here, we reward excesses of wealth with tax relief. During the last seven years we have reduced the state share of our GDP to significantly less than 50%.

MIKE JOSLIN Dorchester

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Liberal viewpoint - Dorset Echo