Letter: Stop VAT myth

Yes, indeed, let us have VAT clarity, as Donald Wright requests in his letter (9 January); all he needed to say was that the VAT increase is 2.5/17.5, which equals 14.3 per cent, giving a price increase of 2.5 per cent.

But let the media also "cease to collude" with those who perpetuate the myth, begun in the Lib Dem manifesto but later repudiated as unwise by Vince Cable, that the rise will cost each of us 400 per annum or over 600 per household, which would require annual expenditure subject to full VAT of 16,000 or 24,000, in addition to the great bulk of our necessary outgoings which are VAT-free or at 5 per cent.

JOHN BIRKETT

Horseleys Park,

St Andrews, Fife

The Tories have managed to persuade their Lib Dem flunkeys to abandon yet another election pledge, this time not to put up VAT. Tory-in-disguise Nick Clegg was clear during the election that this policy would hurt the poorest hardest. But, like tuition fees, he has done it anyway.

Nick Clegg, David Cameron and George Osborne are the products of an Eton/Oxbridge- educated elite. They are all sons of millionaires. They have never known financial hardship in their lives - they have never had the threat of eviction or the electricity or gas being cut off.

They tell us there is no alternative, but they could start by going after the estimated 25 billion in corporation tax that goes unpaid every year.

ALAN HINNRICHS

Gillespie Terrace

Dundee