SIR,

I was interested to read Mr Robsons's response to my letter about what he refers to as the bedroom tax.

One would like to debate these issues sensibly but it is difficult when all you are presented with is an archetypal left wing rant rehearsing the same old insulting rhetoric that monsters anyone trying to restore fiscal responsibility to government.

But while we debate welfare we must be mindful of facts; The EU has 20 per cent of world GDP but pays 40 per cent of the world's welfare. We have a debt approaching 100 per cent of UK GDP, totting up £2.5 billion extra debt per week that our kids will have to re-pay. You could say this has something to do with a chancellor whose main qualification for the job was being David Cameron's mate, but it is also in large part due to the enormous structural deficit left by Labour which any government would struggle to redress. In fact the country was in deep trouble before the banking crisis hit, something Labour supporters try and gloss over if they can.

Even the boom years of Labour were an illusion, funded by public and private borrowing, fuelling unsustainable consumption on cheap credit that people thought ever increasing house prices would cover. Sadly the money had to be repaid some time and that is where we are at.

Under Blair/ Brown the welfare bill rose by 50 per cent at a supposed time of prosperity and job creation. A whole generation was infantilised by a benefits culture that in too many cases made it more profitable to stay at home to watch Jeremy Kyle than go out to work.

Even when there was work it took young and adventurous Poles and Estonians to come over and do it for us because so many of our youth were and remain unemployable.

Now 18p out of every tax pound is used to service debt.

Every penny of income tax is spent on welfare. For people like Mr Robson it clearly isn't enough. Clearly if you work hard, become successful and rich from your own sweat (and have the audacity to afford a nanny) you become the enemy. Perhaps if we all celebrated success and aspired to achieve it instead of being suspicious of it the country would be better off.

Finally Mr Robson signed off by painting a rosy picture of post-war Britain that read more like a speech from a Miss World contestant than anything else. Unfortunately that union-led nirvana ended in three day working weeks, nationalised industrial inefficiency, 98 per cent tax rates, 15 per cent inflation, queues at petrol stations, regular power cuts and brown outs, the IMF being called in, 10 million man hours lost to strikes each year, flying pickets, anti-democratic union practices and the small matter of the winter of discontent.

If preventing a return to those halcyon days makes you a spittle flecked Little Englander then sign me up.

Gareth Dunn

(Monmouth)