Readers discuss the Budget and the NHS, Lammy’s reforms to the judicial system and Metro’s reporting on antiques (Picture: Gareth Fuller – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Do you agree with our readers? Have your say on these MetroTalk topics and more in the comments
On taxes, reader says 'our increasingly demanding lives are increasingly expensive'
Ellie and Rob (MetroTalk, Tue) set out our commonly held frustrations and expectations with tax.
As Ellie says, many of today’s challenges are largely unresolvable by government – the climate crisis, tariffs, the post-Covid aftermath, mental illness epidemic and the needs of the increasingly aged.
Despite this, most of us just want our government to somehow not just restore but improve all our services – without us paying more tax. This is particularly true of our NHS – where rapidly advancing technology brings must-have blessings, yet great expense.
Ellie is right, too, in that modern technology and its sensationalist doom-scrolling and instant gratification leaves us constantly dissatisfied and angry – ‘It shouldn’t be like this, everything should be better, and fast! Why doesn’t someone just fix it?’
And Rob is correct that how cuts to preventative care have led to more people going into hospital, which costs more. As a GP for more than 40 years I was both a witness and a participant-victim to all this.
Yes, we need always to scrutinise how governments best spend our taxes – but our current long, increasingly demanding and resource-hungry lives are also increasingly expensive.
Dr David Zigmond, London
Anesthetist monitoring data on computer screen during operation (Photo by Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Are people ‘living under a Tory rock’?
Denise (MetroTalk, Thu) questions whether money was wasted under the last Tory government. At first I thought she was joking but clearly Denise has been living under a Tory rock. How about the Covid test and trace app; dodgy PPE contracts; not pursuing fraudulent bounceback loans; the Rwanda scheme – to name the most recent ones?
The Tories were anything but fiscally responsible. Kevin, Blackheath
Reader slams David Lammy
Justice secretary David Lammy is ending trial by jury for crimes with sentences of less than three years to clear the backlog of cases in the courts system (Metro, Wed). This is a serious concern. One of the most-esteemed judges in England, Lord Devlin, once said of juries that they were ‘the lamp that shows that freedom lives’. Sarah Bird, London
(Picture: Thomas Krych/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstoc)
Got a question about UK politics?
Send in yours and Metro's Senior Politics Reporter Craig Munro will answer it in an upcoming edition of our weekly politics newsletter. Email [email protected] or submit your question here.
Do social media comment sections legitimise scrapping of trial by jury?
Have you seen the state of comments on social media? There is no way I’d like to have my future decided by representatives of the public on a jury. Neil Dance, Birmingham
This reader likes Metro’s ‘reports of serendipitous discoveries of antique and vintage items’
Metro does a nice line in reports of serendipitous discoveries of antique and vintage items.
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This year, stories have included a marble statue thought to be more than 2,000-years-old, found in a rubbish bag in Greece, a book from 1634 found in a wardrobe, a 50-year-old crisp packet found in a hedgerow and at least three messages in bottles, penned 31, 42-plus and 119 years ago.
Intriguing distractions from the hi-tech digital world. Richard Beck, London
Sparky joke
Electrician in a uniform carrying cables on his shoulder isolated on white background
What did the electrician’s wife say when he came home late from work? Wire you insulate? Col, via email
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