MOST of the world’s societies are built upon hierarchies.

Ours is undoubtedly one of ‘class’. ‘Upper’, ‘middle’ and ‘lower’ prefixes label us.

Hereditary class is still a significant determinant of subsequent generations.

Originally, many ‘upper class’ recipients benefited by the use of royally granted titles, ownership of land and its subsequent wealth.

One’s future in life however, is now increasingly decided not by ‘class’ but by the wealth of one’s parents and their ability to provide their offspring with a good education and an ‘upper class’ accent.

‘Class’ can be purchased in other words!

I have some sympathy with poor souls like Boris Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Gove and others who may have been forced to endure their young lives in boarding schools in which bullying and competitiveness prevailed in an enforced absence of familial love and affection.

It explains a lot but doesn’t excuse their later adult behaviour.

Boarding schools have been described by noted psychologists as producing sociopath CEOs.

Current Tory Cabinet Members seem to endorse this theory.

What mostly concerns me is that the rich and powerful avoid real contact with the world as a means of avoiding feelings of pity and sympathy for or empathy with, the long-suffering poor.

We all seem to have caught the same disease.

We are all complicit in the use of pageantry and grammar to delineate our relative positions in the class structure with minimal physical contact between respective levels. Wot chance wood i have if i adnt ad sum elp wiv this letter fur inst?

The Tory Party is a political representation of the rich and powerful many of whom attended famous public schools.

It suits them to extend their influence over society by constantly belittling the poor and defenceless as being ‘shirkers’ and other insultingly gratuitous descriptions.

Jacob Rees-Moggs’s inferring that Grenfell’s dead were ‘lacking common sense’ makes my case.

I ask your readers, Tory councillors and voters and recent voting-age attainers to question whether they should support a Tory ideology which avoids confronting suffering and ill-health.

Proof of what I suggest may be evidenced by a Housing Benefit system which will soon be manned by robots but importantly severing any links they might have with empathy-avoiding human beings.

Mike Joslin

Garfield Avenue

Dorchester