IT IS true as you say in your editorial (August 12) that the main parties have entrenched positions on the economy, but actually these positions don’t differ greatly from one another.

Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem all define economic improvement as an increase in gross domestic product (GDP), the justification for this fixation being the claim that we need more growth to pay for all the goods and services that we are supposed to want.

Yet the UK is not a poor country, otherwise what are we to make of the situation in countries like Bangladesh or much of Africa?

The problem for the UK is not insufficient total wealth, but a grossly unequal distribution of that wealth and this problem has got worse ever since our politicians succumbed to the neo-liberal doctrines of Milton Friedman.

Everyone alive on the planet has the same right to a decent quality of life, but if achieving this is not to threaten our very survival through irreversible climate change, then there has to be recognition that that we consume, and waste, far too much.

Such a notion is not on the agenda of any of any of the main parties but forms the very essence of the Green Party’s philosophy.

Pippa Bartoletti Yewberry Lane Newport