SO county council leader Mitchell is at it again (Library plan ‘not a U-turn’, Saturday’s Oxford Mail), in this case by discrediting the library closure protesters with smearing generalisation: “The sheer volume of people’s reaction, many of them who had never been near a library in their life” and then by expressing his disappointment that these mostly unread people “do not rate social care – old people with dementia and young disabled kids – a bit more highly”.

Mr Mitchell would do well to acquaint himself with the fallacy of the converse accident, but that might require going to a library.

Mr Mitchell is no doubt well read in applied economics, from the profound analyses of Alfred Marshall and John Maynard Keynes to the more recent work of the Nobel laureates, Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.

Mr Mitchell will therefore be familiar with the compelling social, moral and economic argument against cuts in public spending during recession and depression and the equally compelling argument for significant investment which would then nourish the economy and stabilise employment.

It was with good reason that US President Barack Obama, in his address at Westminster Hall did not endorse the ‘recovery’ policies of the Cameron-Osborne interchange.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH, Bowness Avenue, Headington, Oxford