IN A recent edition of The Issue, on The Big Society, you had yet another undoubtedly affluent Tory, Matthew Barber, talk of “difficult times ahead for all of us”.

This is, of course, another play on the ‘we’re all in this together,’ fallacy.

I don't actually think the average Oxford Mail reader believes such nonsense any more, but why do these Con-Dem politicians continue to parrot such garbage?

In recent pages, we’ve had two letters from Gordon Clack that tackled this particular issue but have not received one reply.

I wonder why?

Could it be his line that these same people, the Mitchells and Barbers of this world, want us to pursue charitable causes, with volunteers running even basic services, yet are still quite happy to receive generous expenses themselves.

Food, fuel, gas, electricity and VAT have all gone up, just like almost everything ordinary people use on a daily basis.

On the other side, jobs are being lost by the thousand, with little or no wage rises – which itself equates to a loss in earnings due to inflation.

Pensioners, including my mother, are struggling to make ends meet.

Now the nasty Tories and discredited Lib Dems want to secure our NHS with the latest reforms. What utter rubbish.

I’m no fan of New Labour either. Their abysmal record on the Iraq war, privatisation, PFI waste and NHS and education marketisation, says enough. They had a chance to penalise the banks during the crisis but failed miserably; the bonuses kept coming.

The Tories were going to peg bank bonuses at £2,000, but what happened to that promise?

Boom and bust are part of the capitalist system, at the expense of ordinary working people.

As one Oxford Mail correspondent put it recently, the system must change.

I offer a comment from author Philip Pullman, who, when asked on Central News (on January 20), about impending library closures, said: “I call this the greedy ghost of market fundamentalism; people who believe passionately in the freedom of the market to do as it likes. It is destructive and will kill us all, if we’re not careful.”

One wonders how many people will lose jobs this year and homes when interest rates go up.

I also wonder if the likes of Cameron, Clegg, Mitchell and Barber give a damn? I think I know the answer.

Tim W Siret, Millmoor Crescent, Eynsham