TORY leader David Cameron’s youth job creation scheme appears to be a watered-down version of Maggie Thatcher’s Youth Opportunity Programme (Yop) schemes which killed all the apprenticeships and many other jobs.

Very few of the trainees were kept on after the six months of free wages ran out. Why would you start and pay someone when you can have another for free?

One lady told me she had been finished by a large supermarket who were replacing any part-time staff with Yops.

Get real, Mr Cameron, and start supporting apprenticeships as we are now so short of skilled persons due to Mrs Thatcher’s determination to deskill people and kill their barganing power.

I have just returned from five weeks in Germany where you can see how the reliance on industry and the value placed upon skills is paying dividends.

The euro is up and public works are proceeding everywhere. And to all you sceptics, if the EU is to blame for all our problems why have they still got coal mines, steel works and car factories?

Blame the Tories – they killed industry for the white heat of the technical revolution which has just melted away to India, etc.

Tom Cooper, Durham.