THE coalition Government is making it difficult for me to write letters about it these days.

It is a continuous conveyor belt of maverick ideas and policies.

Before I have found time to write about one such bizarre offering, it has announced another.

From the Conservative Party Conference we heard of complicated plans to ensure that no one is better off on benefits than being in work.

I agree that people who don’t work because they are better off on benefits need to look at their own conscience. However, I recall the hardship caused to so many innocent people in Margaret Thatcher’s crackdown on board and lodgings claimants in the Eighties, and I can only see that this new policy is going to have similar consequences on groups in society that the Conservatives haven’t thought about.

Now, this plan to withdraw child benefit for people in a higher tax bracket – but to instead introduce tax breaks for certain groups – is just asking for something to go wrong.

The coalition has ridiculed the Building Schools for the Future programme and said it will replace it with something better.

I suggest it is the change from one policy to another which will wreak havoc to our education system.

Jeremy Whiting, Great Lumley, Chester-le-Street, Co Durham