YeT again county council leader Keith Mitchell enters the letter columns of the Oxford Mail intent upon supporting the myth that all of our economic troubles can be laid squarely on the spending of the last government.

The Tories hope that the more that they pursue this myth, the more people are likely to accept it. But it doesn’t always work that way.

During a recent broadcast of Question Time a Tory panelist started a contribution with the standard mantra, blaming the last Government for all of the economic problems facing the country. Yet the audience did something practically unheard of, they started to barrack him because they know that the matter is much more complex.

Mr Mitchell’s diatribes give a hint as to what really motivates the Tories’ economic policy, by complaining that the Labour government poured money into public services.

If there is anything that the Tories hate, it is public services. And that is why they are showing such delight as they unleash their policy of slash, burn and destruction upon anything that does not meet their warped ideological views.

These targets are primarily the state education system, the NHS and benefits, and as they do this they take the country not out of economic crisis but deeper into it.

There is a story about a person who, on starting a new job, goes to their desk and finds two envelopes labelled ‘one’ and ‘two’, with the instruction, ‘open letter one when you get into your first crisis and letter two when you have your second’.

Time goes by and the person enters their first crisis. They open the first envelope finding a message which says, ‘blame everything on your predecessor.

They do this and the problems appear to disappear. Months go by and they get into an even bigger mess. In a panic they remember the second envelope so they open it and find the advice: ‘make two envelopes.’ Start writing those envelopes Keith.

Brian M Leahy, Hanney Road, Steventon, Abingdon