BEFORE taking power in 2010 Osborne told us “we will safeguard Britain’s credit rating with a credible plan to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit over a Parliament”.

With the loss of our triple AAA credit rating it is clear that Osborne’s plan A has spectrally failed and his attempts to blame others for his chronic failures are fooling no-one. Osborne inherited an economy, which was recovering, albeit slowly, but the combination of a 2.5% VAT rise, resulting in a £12bn blow to consumer spending, (knocking almost 1% off gross domestic product per annum) and the impact of his austerity programme has stopped the recovery in its tracks. We are all suffering from wages which are not keeping up with the cost of living, a national debt that has gone up from £811 billion to £1.1 trillion and rising. Osborne has learned nothing from his past mistakes and is determined to carry on with the failed monetarist policy of 1920s and 1930s. Cllr Nigel Dix Blackwood