DES Morgan’s letter (The Adver, August 21) was headed "Nobody wants poverty". Sorry, Des, yes they do! In many economic theories a key tool to control inflation is high unemployment, known to create poverty.

I’m sure he will remember 5,000,000 people out of work in the UK, many unable to claim benefits if someone in the house was working, or wives and children unable to sign-on or claim benefits. The Thatcher years. In my letter from August 18 I wrote: “Workers were looking for their freedom well before 1900."

I wrote about the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1832, I also reminded Des that unions were not allowed by the ruling elite until 1871.

The timeline goes much further back than 100 years.

Recent history records the UK adopting the UN Declaration of Human Rights and free speech for all in the UK in 1948; after I was born. In his letter to justify food banks Des digresses to the "relaxation of wartime rationing", forgetting as he writes that it was Churchill who imposed rationing. Sadly it was wartime and necessary.

In 1946, as the world war ended, it took many years to rebuild the infrastructure including world food production. Now I read, in a speech the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, the quiet man, warns that the benefits paid to the sick and disabled need to be overhauled?

Is this his efforts to get sick people "back to work"?

The Japanese Army used this ploy of no work, no food as POWs built the Burma Railway. In his last paragraph Des says: “No-one wants to see a starving child, an infirm elderly person or a person out of work."

Is that right, Des?

Sorry to say I disagree. The faces change but the philosophy of the ruling elite never does.

MIKE SPRY Mayfield Close Nythe