I wonder what Brunel, who was depicted in the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony, would make of the once ‘workshop of the world’ reduced to employing its people to be assembly workers for foreign companies based here?

The Government plans to pay the Hitachi company £4.5bn to set up a factory to produce 92 high-speed trains in County Durham.

Our own High Speed 125, a world-class train produced here in large numbers since 1976, should have been continually improved to replace this ageing model.

This and the last Government lacks a sense of history and dignity and I cannot see an economic recovery happening until our rulers start to support farmers in a drive to make us more self-sufficient in food and re-establish our ability to manufacture our own ships, planes, trains and cars which we once sold to the rest of the world.

Terry Randall Grove Street Wantage