Peter Barton’s letter (Austerity Rejected) shows up the main political parties for what they are – beholden to wealth. The world is awash with money but it now resides in fewer and fewer hands.

Only this week I read that something like £40 trillion is tucked away in tax havens. If this was in circulation, poverty would be eradicated and we could afford every Green Party initiative going.

Peter might find that he will be accused of being jealous of the fat cats by quite ordinarily well-off people and asked why should the wealthy subsidise those who struggle to survive? This seems to be the Tory battle cry!

It is the fat cat billionaires who are wrecking this planet, not people earning £100,000 a year or those paying bedroom tax! We are looking at a tiny minority of individuals whose combined wealth is about half of the world’s total annual gross product and which is stored away in inaccessible banks.

They lock their money up in faraway places and stay in friendly tax regimes like that of the UK with its rich and friendly politicians. They enjoy its benefits without contributing fairly.Once again, European governments are having to think of propping up their economies with even more Quantitative Easing.

It’s cash that wage earners eventually finish up providing simply because the world now lacks wealth recycling. When the top band of taxation in the UK and USA was 95% in the 1950s the world economy grew steadily.

Altruism has been replaced by the worship of Mammon whose disciples of greed will adhere to one another relentlessly until they collectively own the world and everyone else in it.

Mike Joslin, Garfield Avenue, Dorchester