I HAVE been dismayed over a number of years by the way people have been encouraged and allowed to live on credit.

Mortgages, student loans and hire purchase are means of obtaining a better quality of life, and if managed well, can work. What has gone wrong is that the UK economy has relied more and more on foreign investment, based on selling and buying shares and currency.

One of the reasons why joining the euro was resisted so fiercely in some quarters was that selling sterling to foreign traders made a handsome profit. Unfortunately for our economy, sterling has taken a beating because it is underpinned by fewer and fewer assets.

Our manufacturing base is steadily reducing and being bought up by foreign companies, many of whom move the operational part abroad. Our gold reserves were sold a few years ago by this government.

Now there is a world recession and the UK government is bailing out banks because they are the basis of our economy and without them we have no economy.

Wouldn't it have been more sensible if the Government had used the money (our money) it is using now to bail out the banks for inward investment in manufacturing? Our own rail industry was making trams and trains until comparatively recently. Our own steel works were producing steel for British goods and our utilities were British owned. The only time our government invests in anything seemingly is when they are failing!

Compare this to the French government which invests in their own transport system and makes it one of the best in the world, and the German government, which invests in energy and legislates to improve the market, which makes investment in energy installations more worthwhile.

Gail Coleshill, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, North East Somerset Liberal Democrats.