NESTLÉ is signing up to the Living Wage, yet doesn’t illustrate if all employees receive what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation openly question is the Minimum Income Standard.

In other words, do all UK employees receive enough each week to survive, which is largely dependent on the total weekly hours worked in relation to any fall in benefits.

There is generally an increasing confusion regarding the three existing earning parameters: minimum wage; living wage; the minimum income standard.

Thrown into this confused mix are welfare benefits and adherence to stringent rules and deliberately difficult hurdles for desperate working class people.

Hugh Bayley welcomes the news about the Living Wage, or should that be higher hourly rate minimum standard? Yet New Labour offers no imaginative alternative to the Tories regarding punitive benefits punishment.

Plenty of cash is available for wars and sending billions abroad with wars financed from that bottomless, unaudited infamous war chest.

Could Mr Bayley reveal where the war chest is kept, in amongst 10 Downing Street’s fine wine collection down in the cellar perhaps?

As the bellicose Mr Bayley proposes more spent on defence in his sabre-rattling with Russia, they may need a bigger war chest.

Tom Scaife, Manor Drive, York.