I TOTALLY agree with "Forest against the cuts" in last week's Review, who said that the economics of the free market relies on having a pool of people looking for work, to enable companies to grow.

Those of us old enough to remember the late 50s, when Harold McMillan said: "You've never had it so good," can recall leaving school (not many of us went to university in those days) and starting work with a choice of any number of apprenticeships. Even then, unemployment stood at 6 per cent, the latest figures being 7.8 per cent not a vast difference. Therefore it follows that the unemployed have to be paid benefits. It is no use complaining about it, like George Osborne did in his Autumn?Statement, and to blame them for the economic woes, when we all know that it was George's friends in the city who got us into this mess in the first place. It's also a bit rich when this sort of criticism is directed at people, the majority of whom are unemployed through no fault of their own, by a man with such a privileged background, that he has never had to enter the job market except as a career politician.

Mr Osborne needs to stop pandering to Daily Mail readers, and start coming up with some real ideas to sort out this country's finances, because he has long passed the time when he can continue blaming that old scapegoat,?Gordon?Brown.

– 'Old Labour,' Chepstow.