Readers' letters - March 10

I think Theresa May is the ‘reincarnation’ of Margaret Thatcher!

How cynical can 
this Tory Government get?

Two independent tribunals ruled against the Government in favour of two claimants and their PIP disability benefits.

The tribunals ruled that the rules for the mobility component should also take into consideration people who suffer a mental health issue – so the Government is planning a cynical tactic to change the rules of eligibility for disability benefit PIP.

One senior Tory spokesman calls the tribunal decisions bizarre!

They call it ‘bizarre’ only because the tribunal ruled in the claimants’ favour and NOT in the Government’s.

Had the tribunal ruled in the Government’s favour, this situation wouldn’t have surfaced, and no more ‘cuts’ or ‘reform’ to PIP would even be in debate.

This saga has only risen because of two separate recent tribunal decisions.

I can just see new legislation coming in when no claimant is allowed a right of appeal against any Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) decision and that will truly be a sad day for democracy in the UK as we all know it today.

Maybe the greedy ‘money-grasping’ MPs can now justify to all of us their own ‘entitlement’ to their new pay rise?

Darryl Ashton

Address supplied

Booze shop won’t help

I am responding to your front page article, Call for Action on Yobs, regarding antisocial youths on a road in Orrell (WEP March 7).

Coun Stephen Murphy criticises Greater Manchester Police, and says he is frustrated with the police’s response to concerns voiced by himself and residents.

This is unbelievable.

Of course, antisocial behaviour perpetrated by misbehaving youths is not acceptable.

But Coun Murphy sat on a licensing sub-committee at Wigan Council on February 23. He appeared to ignore the many concerns of local residents in Ashton in Makerfield, including that of his Labour colleague Coun Jenny Bullen, when they raised concerns regarding the potential consequence of antisocial behaviour as a result of approving yet another booze shop.

Michael Moulding

Ashton in Makerfield

‘Race Horse Deathwatch’

Ten years ago this month, Animal Aid launched a new initiative, entitled Race Horse Deathwatch.

The aim of the project was to monitor and publish detailed information on

as many on-course race horse deaths as we could find out about, because the racing industry did not do so.

Ten years on, little has changed.

Racing’s regulator, the British Horseracing Authority, merely publishes the number of horses killed whilst racing, and not the names of the horses or how they died.

Animal Aid, however, does.

The names of 1,500 horses, killed as a result of racing in the last decade, appear on the Race Horse Deathwatch website.

However, the true

figure is likely to be much greater.

The majority of those horses were killed after breaking their leg, or neck, whilst racing, or because they collapsed and

died.

This shocking number of fatalities is racing’s dirty secret.

We continue our work to expose it – on behalf of all those horses who had nobody to speak out for them except us.

www.horsedeathwatch.com

Fiona Pereira

Campaign Manager

Animal Aid