An independent's view

Ihave written many letters to your postbag to try and spell out why our lives and living standards have starting to plummet; an unregulated free market economy, banking sector greed and New Labour's policies are the root cause.

The buy-to let-sector, and free movement of European labour set against a very low mininum wage was the toxic mix which helped drive down living standards.

The mininum wage gave every Business in Britain a benchmark to aspire to; get your workers to work for as little as possible.

When the reserve pool of labour from Europe was introduced, British and foreign business embraced the free market and started exploiting eastern european labour, paying them minium wage with the taxpayer having to subsidise exploited British and foreign nationals with working tax credits.

The law states we must earn a mininum amount to live on, so whyare British and foreign businesses allowed to break the law, along with employment agencies, who steal off the working class and drive wages down?

Japan in the 1980s built its economy on a housing bubble very similar to Great Britain's.

Japan went into recession and then stagnation for 18 years because of this policy, this is happening to the UK

Michael Conlon, nominated independent candidate for Maltby