LETTER: Who is running Great Britain? The Government or the banks?

The credit crunch arose due to the gambling by the banks with our money. When this all went south, the Government was forced to borrow billions of pounds in our name to prevent a total collapse of our economy. The Government has stated it cannot control what the banks do either now or in the future. Therefore I would ask - who is running the country, the elected government or the banking industry?

What has contributed to our difficulties is the enforced decline in our industrial production and increased bias towards the City and the service industries. This was down to the Thatcher years and her ideas of exporting or closing down our industries. All our efforts were directed towards the service industry and City of London.

We are now in trouble, due to the lack of productive capacity. Having sold off our gold reserves for peanuts and printing money whose value is only based on our current GDP, we are suffering from the decline in the value of our currency abroad. This has made many things we purchase far more expensive and led to high inflation.

The answer being put forward by Mr Cameron is the Big Society. Had he, like myself, been able to remember the hardships and deprivation of the 1920s and 1930s, he might have had an inkling as to what community was, and is, about.

I think that for a population to develop real harmony, and help for one another, that population must have endured great privation and suffering. This also, I think, applies to individuals as well. Those who have never known hardship have little respect or compassion for others. This is why, in my opinion, this current contingent of private school leaders will never be of any use to ordinary people.

Sadly, we do not seem to be able to find a politician with the foresight and ability to unite the country and extricate us from the mess we are in without penalising those least able to bear the load. I always regarded a coalition as being a blending of the best brains of all the parties in the interests of the country rather than the propping up of a minority government by self-seeking politicians. I have voted Liberal for 40 years, but no more.

G. JOHNSON

Station Road, Foulridge