Governments and politicians make easy and satisfying targets, but the reality is that they seek to provide what they understand the electorate is asking for: the opportunity to buy more, and also to enjoy better public services.

Working with the finance sector they have encouraged easy consumer credit based on inflated house prices, and have expanded public services by borrowing rather than by raising taxes.

As a result financial fortunes have soared, and global merchants have exploited cheap labour in developing countries so as to provide British consumers with short-lived, cheap throw-away products to buy.

The buzz word still ringing out at the party conferences is “growth”, the ridiculous big business nostrum that if you are not growing you are shrinking.

This produces economic policies of make-believe prosperity; a steep decline in British manufacturing; shoddy products that cannot be repaired; mountains of waste; and western-controlled impoverishment of the developing world.

Part of the solution is thoughtful purchasing by consumers, and the acceptance that taxation in its many forms is the fee we pay for membership of a civilised society.

Maurice Vassie, Cartmans Cottage, Deighton, York