Have a Good NEWS

As the Robbespierrean-sounding Office for Budget Responsibility begins to assert its public profile (Osborne cites deficit as he toughens budget plan, 15 June), its distinguished interim chair would do well to draw on the lessons of experience.

At the conclusion of Adam Curtis's 1992 documentary exposé of the destructive monetarist fantasies of Thatcherism, The League of Gentlemen, Alan Budd offers the following sombre observations on the 1980s policies for which he supplied the gloss of supposed economic objectivity: "The nightmare I sometimes have about this whole experience runs as follows … there may have been people making the actual policy decisions … who never believed for a moment that this was the correct way to bring down inflation. They did, however, see that it would be a very, very good way to raise unemployment. And raising unemployment was an extremely desireable way of reducing the strength of the working classes … that what was engineered there, in Marxist terms, was a crisis of capitalism which recreated a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since."

In view of his new role, we can only hope that Budd is this time confronting the political agenda behind his economic analysis with his eyes wide open.

Professor Robert Davis

University of Glasgow

• George Osborne kept insisting that the budget deficit would turn out to be worse than Labour said. It now transpires the deficit is slightly less bad than forecast. So he now insists other figures are more important, including estimates of growth which Alan Budd himself has insisted are quite uncertain. It seems that even where the numbers are independently produced, ministers can fiddle the interpretation â€" quite shamefully.

David Butler

London

• The comments ("It's a culture shock for people to switch from public to private sector ... It's not a 35-hour week for example â€" you don't go in at 9am and leave at 5pm") attributed to Paul Kelly in your article (How to work past retirement, Work, 5 June) are insulting to the majority of public sector managers, and perpetuate a myth that needs to be challenged. Remarks such as these do a huge disservice to public sector workers, totally failing to recognise the complexity and constraints of working in many parts of the public sector.

In my experience as a senior manager in the NHS I and my colleagues and friends rarely had the chance to work our contracted hours (37 per week). A 50 to 60 hour week was not unusual. While I was working in the NHS I had neither the time nor the energy to challenge the myths about public sector working; the same is probably true of my colleagues â€" hence the erroneous views continue unchallenged.

Bren Sainsbury

Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire

• Your reference to "gold-plated state sector pensions" (Report, 15 June) is a tendentious distortion of the facts. Most of those working in the public sector are on relatively low wages (when compared with similar private sector jobs). Many are part-time workers and female. They contribute to the pension scheme from their wages and accept a lower wage on the understanding that they will receive a reasonable pension on retirement â€" it is not a free gift. Now that all big companies have scrapped their own contributory pension schemes, the only sector left with a guaranteed pension is the public sector. The attacks on these are part of the attempt to roll back all pension provision per se, but it is a red herring to divert people's anger away from the bankers towards public sector workers.

Bruni de la Motte

London

• What happened to the Robin Hood tax? This simple idea was launched in February by a broad coalition of UK development and environmental charities, trade unions and faith groups. They called for the application of a tiny tax on bank-to-bank transactions, which would generate billions of pounds for social spending in the UK and to tackle poverty and climate change abroad. Tiny, in this case, means an average rate of only 0.05%. Billions, in this case being around £250bn if the tax were applied around the world. The billions raised will certainly lessen the need to raise other taxes.

Perhaps the Robin Hood tax is dead in the water because of subtle opposition from those who profit most from the status quo.

Sister Gillian Price

Much Hadham, Hertfordshire

• Polly Toynbee (Cuts will hit the poor hard. Tax rises would be far fairer, 12 June) is right that tax raises would be fairer than service cuts. However, keeping the same profile of taxes but raising more from each simply reinforces the unfair nature of our tax system. VAT should certainly not rise given its regressive character. If tax rises are considered necessary â€" and that is disputed â€" they should be targeted at the top 10% who are at present comparatively under-taxed and whose higher tax payments would have less of an effect on reducing overall demand.

Dr Sally Ruane

De Montfort University

• Provided appropriate balancing measures are taken to protect those on low incomes, those on the left should not automatically object to raising VAT. Shifting the tax burden from labour to consumption favours those manufacturers and services employing people in this country at the expense of those that sell imported goods. The Nordic countries, by far the most equal in Europe, all charge VAT at either 22% or 25%.

Laurence Rowe

Manchester