THERE are real financial problems for those at the bottom of the heap in society.

The minimum wage or zero hours contracts do not provide enough for a family to live on. These people are supported, at present, by in work welfare but are now the target of our Tory government. The debate has become polarised between the parties but there is little in the way of a radical solution.

When I was young jobs were plentiful and there was no excuse for the lazy or workshy. Nowadays those who are not skilled in communication or who cannot put together a good CV are very often left without any work to adequately support them. This stems back to the Thatcher years where a pool of unemployed was seen as a sensible method of controlling wages and trade union power. This orthodoxy has been encouraged and perpetuated by neo-liberal economics now practised in almost every society throughout the world.

In my view we should pick up on the Tory mantra; we should make work pay and "hardworking people" should be supported. This should be done, not by tax cuts for the rich, but by legislating that the living wage should be paid to all people in work. This would, at a stroke, reduce the welfare bill by around £30 billion. As a follow-up the state should provide meaningful work to everyone that is fit for it. There is certainly enough work needing done at the lowest level throughout society for those people to do.

These actions would increase GDP to a very large degree, increase taxation income markedly and provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to increase custom rather than, as now, the state subsidising bad employers, the tax take bumping along at a rate insufficient to repay the national debt and businesses struggling for custom. These suggestions would change the dynamic so that employers would have to compete for staff rather than, as now, paying as little as they can get away with.

DS Blackwood,

1 Douglas Drive East, Helensburgh.