Do you agree with our readers? Have your say on these MetroTalk topics and more in the comments
'Reform UK will have blood on their hands for ruining lives'
Further to your article about Reform UK proposing to deport up to 288,000 people living in the UK each year (Metro, Tue).
Its home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said these would be people living here ‘illegally’.
This is not entirely true. Mr Yusuf’s party has confirmed it will deport people who are currently here legally with ILR (indefinite leave to remain) by increasing the salary threshold to a reported £60,000.
These are our foreign nurses, carers, waiters, husbands, wives etc. My partner and my carer would both be deported under these rules, as well as tens of thousands of key workers.
This is an outrage and Reform UK will have blood on their hands for ruining lives. A Bull, via email
Are the Tories and Reform backing a privatised NHS?
Sharon (MetroTalk, Wed) claims it is more and more common for politicians, particularly from the Tories and Reform UK, to suggest we privatise the NHS and switch to an insurance-based system.
I am a keen follower of politics and have never heard any Tory suggest this and, when in government, they poured more money into the NHS, just like Labour.
Reform UK has never proposed privatising the NHS but at the last general election promised tax relief on private health insurance.
There is not a straight choice between the NHS in its current model and the US system, as Sharon describes it.
Some countries on the continent have a mix of public and private provision. The principle that nobody should be denied healthcare due to their means is observed and they have better outcomes and survival rates than us, but it is doubtful any UK party will take us down that road. Rupert Fast, Esher
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 alrightgov@metro.co.uk or submit your question here.
Reader gives ‘credit where credit’s due’ on Labour’s SEND reforms
They’re far from perfect, but credit where credit’s due on the government’s SEND reforms.
Too many children end up being diagnosed after they’re already deeply bedded into their current school, only to find that that school has basically no special needs support.
If the ‘experts at hand’ system gives every school access to a network of specialists, then that would make a huge difference. But the challenge (as I’m sure the government knows) is to make these plans work in reality. Helen Shaw, Liverpool
Will travel companies hike up prices if headteachers lump together inset days?
A headteacher has lumped his school’s five ‘inset’ days together so families are able to get away for a full week without getting hit by holiday price hikes (Metro, Wed).
Python Hill Academy’s Andy Stirland has added them to the end of the May half-term.
While I love the idea, travel industry companies will most definitely increase prices during that additional week so schools would need to change the week periodically to avoid this happening, otherwise families will be back to square one and still have extortionate holiday prices. Tracey M, London
This reader seems to hate ‘the Great British Public’ but loves sarcasm
Congratulations to the Great British public for their exceptional political apathy that has left us with a self-righteous Blairite puppet-tyrant obsessed with digital ID and facial recognition as our PM; and the White Walkers of Reform and Narnia of Green as opposition.
Well done for protesting against Israel, tax-paying British trans people and refugees, and never taking to the streets for paying the highest bills in the world in a bitterly cold country, or for sky-rocketing rent and surreal house prices.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for letting tech and AI companies eliminate thousands of jobs a year and subsequently disembowel our welfare system, and for taking it on the chin and being such jolly good sports about the whole thing; and for scapegoating the disabled Britons as the cause.
And let me shake your hands for your docility. For scrolling yourselves numb while bringing more money to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and China, instead of upholding the Press, which was set up as the sole sacrosanct bastion against the corruption of government, MPs, corporations and judiciary bodies!
And what a great job you’ve done for not knowing who on earth your MP is, never writing to them about your loss of jobs, energy and food security.
Thank you for eliminating accountability of MPs to their constituents by not participating in democracy and making their £94,000 salary easy money.
Sacking Britain was never this easy. On behalf of the tech bros and Tony Blair and his hand-puppet tech lobbyist Starmer, the billionaires behind Reform UK, and of China, I want to thank you. Bloody well done! Keep being docile, hungry, cold. Keeping giving up your data and freedoms. Catherine Croft, London
Rita Ora is back in the Metro crossword!
Does anyone remember the two letters from January 21, highlighting how often ‘Rita Ora’ would crop up as an answer to Metro’s Quick Crossword?
Well, she’s back! It was good to see the Kosovo-born pop star return as an answer in Tuesday’s paper.
I suspected the combination of letters in her name would be too useful for compilers to resist indefinitely. Welcome back, Rita! William Buckley, Reading
No ‘banging’ for 69 years, reader says
Can radio and television presenters please stop using the word ‘banger’ or ‘banging’ for a song they like, it sounds so infantile.
I was 70 yesterday and we managed without that stupid epithet in all those 69-plus years.
So let’s have another 69 years without it, please. Steve Mitchell, London