JOHN CUMBERLAND (HAS, Feb 11) demands that we dispense with Nissan etc. and develop our own industrial base. Really? How are we to do that?

How are we to create a manufacturing economy when we conspicuously lack the most basic prerequisite for doing so – a national work ethic?

Without a work ethic you couldn’t run a charity shop and if Mr Cumberland thinks we are currently in a position to run a facility like Nissan – when we can’t even run our own transport and utilities properly – then he is even more divorced from reality than I thought.

The fact is this country is being stealthily poisoned by a creeping miasma of laziness, complacency, irresponsibility, drug abuse, immorality and callous indifference to the plight of the most vulnerable (Universal Credit and PIP).

There are several factors at work here, but the principle one is probably the shocking example set by people in authority, whether it be in the trade unions, industry or the public sector.

Whatever the cause, the upshot is, whether you are a worker or an executive, it’s a case of grab all you can and give as little as you can, preferably nothing.

The rot probably goes back as far as the Second World War, which, by the way, we didn’t win. We avoided losing it, but there were only two winners – Russia and America, who treated us with ill-concealed contempt and have continued to do so ever since.

Tony Kelly, Crook