SIR,

I would like to thank Chris Williams for highlighting the ambulance campaign last week. It is a pleasure to receive praise for something one believes in.

It is sad to read that public services are being scaled back while the population continues to increase – Monmouth does deserve better.

However, the real heroes of this town are the silent majority. People like my father who worked all his life in order to support his children.

People like my grandparents who were born with nothing and worked hard to give their kids what they never had. They form the moral backbone of this town.

Public policy ignores many lessons of the past.

One of my most terrifying realisations when I returned to the United Kingdom after the loss of my mother in 2011 was the scale of privatisation and the fragmentation of political responsibility.

Housing developers have more power in the UK than anywhere else in Europe. That is tragic.

I also found out that the Job Centre had left Monmouth. According to the Office of National Statistics need has increased significantly since 2005.

It is unacceptable that people in need have to pay to travel to Abergavenny every two weeks. That is an utter disgrace in a first world country.

It is not the fault of the majority that the British economy is not growing. The jobs which are created are part-time and temporary. Sadly, women are being hit the hardest potentially rolling back decades of developments in the labour market.

Nevertheless, political priorities seem muddled. The economist Richard Murphy has pointed out that tax evasion has reached 80 billion a year.

Conversely, benefit fraud is around 1 billion according to the Department of Work and Pensions. Yet, the losses of financial irresponsibility have been socialised while the gains have been privatised.

Monmouth demands real change.

I will continue to stand up for my community in respect of the world my grandparents fought for and the world I want my grandchildren to live in.

I would encourage all members of the community to do the same.

Mat Davies

(Monmouth)