Dear sirs at The Big Issue, you don’t do joined-up thinking about inflation – you are always the side of the TUC and the striking trade unionists such as Aslef and the RMT and others, who all want extortionate wage rises, but you fail to see that putting wages up fuels inflation because companies have to pass the cost of the wage increase on to the customer! It’s true that 11% is a terrible rate of inflation but giving in to the trade unionists, giving them all they want, will push inflation up even more. This is just common sense but you at The Big Issue can’t or won’t see it!
Malcolm Bazement, Bristol
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Mr Bazement appears to be unaware that nurses, junior doctors, posties, rail workers, and many other employees have suffered huge drops in their standards of living in the last two decades as a result of unnecessary, and deliberately punitive policies of austerity, with many in work needing to claim benefits and access food banks. Others face evictions because they cannot afford market rents. People are saying enough is enough… A raft of political economists point out that far from being wage driven, current high levels of inflation are the result of corporate profiteering or “greedflation” with food, energy sectors and oil particularly notable.
While the Bank of England’s interest rate rises have absolutely no impact on “greedflation” they do further impoverish people while enriching investors and banks. Bank of England economist Huw Pill’s assertion that we should all get used to the idea of being poorer implies we should accept the right of the Bo E to redistribute income from those with least to those with most, and not complain.
Mike French, Budleigh Salterton
