Paisley, pies and paranoia – where Truss got it wrong in her conference speech | Letters
During her conference speech on Wednesday, Liz Truss spoke about growing up in Paisley and Leeds in the 80s and 90s, and the effects of social and economic deprivation on communities. She said: “I know what it’s like to live in a place that doesn’t feel the benefits of economic growth…I’ve seen the stores closed. I have seen hopeless abandoned people turn to drugs.
Of course, it’s not just Paisley and Leeds where this has happened. It was widespread across much of Scotland. I also saw it when teaching at a school in what had once been a thriving mining community.
Sadly, Ms Truss seems to have forgotten which party and prime minister was in power at the time – and the free-market economic policies that were behind the destruction of lives and communities. I have not forgotten. Neither does Scotland.
John A. Campbell
Edinburgh
It seems that Liz Truss has gone from simply promising, every second sentence, to generate “growth”. In her conference speech, she chastised the “anti-growth coalition,” an evil group that seemed to include everyone, inside and outside her party, who disagreed with her fanciful brand of conservatism.
The strike smacks of political paranoia. At the risk of sounding equally paranoid, I wonder how long it will be before our Prime Minister reprimands another figment of her feverish imagination: the anti-motherhood, anti-apple pie coalition that is bent on destroying her dream from a country where no mother is denied the opportunity to grow apple pies.
Bob Wells
London
In her speech, Liz Truss claimed to be the first Prime Minister to have attended a comprehensive school. Those of us with slightly older memories will recall that Gordon Brown attended Kirkcaldy High School. It is a comprehensive school in all but name. Local authority schools in Scotland are not called “comprehensive schools” just because comprehensive education is so ubiquitous.
thomas robert
Edinburgh
I wondered if Liz Truss had bothered to check the lyrics to M People’s song Moving on Up, which accompanied her arrival on stage at the Conservative Party Conference. The first verse is: “You’ve done me wrong, your time’s up / You took a sip from the devil’s cup / You broke my heart, there’s no turning back / Get out of here, baby, go bag your suitcases”.
colin rogers
Porthgwarra, Cornwall
So Liz Truss loves cranes in Birmingham. “This is what a city looks like with a conservative mayor,” she said in her speech. Someone please tell him Birmingham City Council has 65 Labor and 22 Conservative members. Andy Street is the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands.
Geoff Wheeler
Balsall Township, West Midlands
Among a catechism of cliches in her speech, Liz Truss said we need to “make the pie bigger.” Disappointing that she didn’t tell us if it would be pork or cheese pie.
John Kelly
Little Raveley, Cambridgeshire