YOUR LETTERS

I HOPE president Antich's choice of a 13 point plan does not bode bad luck (Combat the Credit Crunch, Wednesday's Daily B).

In good times governments are supposed to spend from the accumulated wealth of the fruits of the nations labour on such worthy, long term causes as education, public transport, agriculture and of course – the ubiquitous environment. If the coffers are over flowing there could be enough of a surplus to give tax cuts to the young, the poor, the disabled (assuming they pay tax anyway) and large families to help them onto the property ladder. So far this is word for word from the plan, full of glorious political manna from heaven. In hard times the opposite policy should apply short term, low cost, high income boosts are sought. Apparently our government feels we are still safely in the good times so good that we also need an Innovation and Science Plan (sic) or is it all just rhetoric?

How can 920 million euros pumped into sewage projects and the like, creating a mere 1000 jobs, at an exorbitant near million each, be justified? The projects of new schools, education centres, health clinics et al, while laudatory, will not generate revenue in fact the opposite - costs. The new schools, education centres and health clinics will need new, additional staff to be funded from the public purse. Here is the rub. Much of the funding is presumed to come not from our Majorcan coffers but a supposedly bottomless pocket of Madrid - a Madrid with many provinces needier and poorer than us. Is the plan a pipe dream or a mere political ploy? To be generous in economic terms it is to say the least naive.

Do we need to spend tax payer's money to create a cross-party committee to “try to reduce the property mountain and to reduce property prices”? An elementary knowledge of supply and demand knows the two work in unison. Excess supply (the mountain) will reduce demand (prices drop). Market forces are already way ahead of our nascent (hopefully still-born) committee with many actual sales prices down 20% since the peak last November.

It could almost make me fall into a state of mid-summer despair but my adopted land always pulls me back to the bright side. Lovely people, lovely food, lovely climate and precisely in that order of importance.

Mike Lillico
Playa de Palma