Poverty and inequality

SIR, – Your columnist Ron Ferguson has a privileged view from his patch of moral high ground. Last week (November 4), his gaze fell on poverty and inequality, arguably the most important issues for the world’s democracies. Governments rise and fall depending on how successfully they protect the vulnerable in society. How helpful, then, that Ron brought us to understand that these and other ills are due to “the fundamental injustices of capitalism”.

Those words took me back to the student newspapers of the 1970s. Funnily enough, that was the last time we enjoyed the anti-capitalist politics Ron appears to prefer.

He saw what the people of Easterhouse went through at that difficult time, so it is hard to understand the nostalgia. I wonder just how equal they felt during the winter of discontent as our economy hit the buffers.