OH dear, once again your serial ranter Colin Mortimer floats the tired mantra of “the mess that Labour left”, when thinking people know that responsibility for the financial meltdown of 2008 was the fault of greedy grasping bankers (HAS, Jan 29).

Unless he was born with a similar silver spoon in his mouth to David Cameron and George Osborne, he will know that the benefits which we now enjoy, such as the NHS, the welfare state, old age pensions, universal suffrage and a host of other measures which improve the lives of ordinary people, were all achieved by successive Liberal and Labour administrations – and all achieved in the teeth of the bitterest opposition from the Tories.

Robert Hammal, Richmond.