REGARDING CASH under mattress of July 18 from K Oakley, one would do well to take note of his letter and its chilling contents.

The economy of Greece has shrunk every year for five years and the austerity programme has turned a financial crisis into a humanitarian crisis. Some 11 per cent of the population now live in extreme material deprivation without enough food, heating or electricity. Unemployment is now over 27 per cent and continues to rise each month, while youth unemployment is above 59 per cent.

Naturally, crime has soared with burglaries rising by a staggering 125 per cent. Austerity is driving even more Greeks to drug abuse while cutting away at the social safety nets that would manage and resolve their addiction. Heroin abuse has grown by over 20 per cent.

The sex industry in Greece has expanded by 150 per cent as the least enfranchised Greek women resort to prostitution to make ends meet. Figures for sexually transmitted diseases have shot up.

Unless the law has changed, any citizen of Greece falling more than 5,000 euros in debt can be imprisoned to work off their debt.

The government is now planning to roll this out more systematically with a specific prison camp dedicated to holding poor Greeks while they work for free for the state. A labour camp is one of the tools of a totalitarian state.

Greece is just a few years and policies ahead of the UK in the ideological austerity agenda and these are the results. You think we are immune to all this? Think again.

The wave of attacks on mosques and Muslims after the 2013 murder of soldier Lee Rigby; a flurry of anti-immigration legislation; the rise of the Ukip vote and the rise in hate crime against disabled people. All these point to a society beginning to buckle under the pressure of relentless propaganda blaming “undesirable elements” for all our ills.

If the UK is resorting to this sort of behaviour, albeit milder than Greece, while unemployment is below eight per cent, the health service remains free at the point of use, and schools and community services are still open, what will happen once austerity enters it next stage?

JEFF ADAMS Bloomsbury Swindon