NATIONAL Insurance is an investment to help us when things go wrong. It’s not a loan! The benefits are manifest. I know what it was like without it in the 1940’s.

We expect to pay for good health. Like car insurance, we should pay more if repair costs increase. Health is a quantifiable asset. George Osborne’s cuts in healthcare, education, social services and the infrastructure come at a price.

The effect on the Bob Cratchits and Tiny Tims of the UK of favouring the Scrooge-like activities of the very rich, mortgages our futures and turns millions of us into creditors.

Osborne isn’t counting on settling the debts he is creating by disenfranchising our rights to financial security, healthcare, education and social services.

He will ignore the real ‘debt of hardship’ which he can never repay.

How could he magically reverse the effects of poverty, ill-health, debt, depression and despair? You may be able to repair old potholes but you can’t repair the people they have damaged quite so easily.

Lee Dalton’s piece (“Overseas Powers 25 July)” shows how mutant forms of capitalism are preparing to seize the private healthcare opportunities with our government’s help. ‘Big Brother’ lurks in the wings.

Our shameful FPTP democracy in which Cameron and Osborne control the economy despite 75 per cent of us not voting for them is not healthy.

The future of privatised healthcare might mean a basic ‘first aid’ public health service with top-up options – ‘third party’ for many and ‘comprehensive’ if you can afford it that is!

Thanks to your paper’s policy of bringing national politics into debate, more of us are beginning to doubt the incessant stream of propaganda from Number 10. Even Cameron’s spin writer Steve Hilton says, perhaps guiltily, that Labour should “...fight big business, help families and go local…”

Our exports have stagnated and the current account is at an all-time high. Our production is inefficient. Why? In 1970 only 10 per cent of company profits were given away in dividends, now it reaches 70 per cent. Capitalism feeds on growth. Growth needs investment and huge dividends restrict investment.

Lack of investment in innovation, the modernisation of industry and our infrastructure is a recipe for disaster.

Jeremy Corbyn, in my opinion correctly states that the privatisation of our utilities and infrastructure which we sweated blood to build up for 200 years, leaves us at the mercy of shareholders only interested in dividends, not investment. A poor FPTP election system has produced a power-besotted government with myopic vision and some nasty class habits. PR could provide a huge incentive to communalism and hope. Cameron’s and Osborne’s ‘one nation’ slogan camouflages the truth of our forced subjugation to their minority will. FPTP defaced Dorchester with the Titanic.

Let’s not allow it to destroy the country.

Mike Joslin

Dorchester