It is not a ‘cost of living crisis’, but the breakdown of the market economy, writes Dr Lindy Sharpe, while Elspeth Drew fears politicians have no understanding of everyday life
I am dismayed by the ease with which politicians and journalists have adopted the bland, off-the-peg label of “cost of living crisis” to describe the situation that is engulfing us. We see workers and those in receipt of social protection payments becoming insolvent because their income won’t pay for basic necessities. Meanwhile, rising prices are being driven, to a large extent and pervasively, by increases in the cost of fossil fuels and everything that derives from them. The fossil fuel industry is the very thing that rational governments would be trying urgently to taper, in the light of unequivocal evidence of climate and environmental breakdown. So people choose between eating and heating, while fossil fuel company directors and shareholders reap the rewards of an industry that, in the UN secretary general’s words, is “killing us”. This is not a cost of living crisis, it is a breakdown of the market economy.
Dr Lindy Sharpe
London
• I was moved to tears by Jenny Lumley’s letter (10 May). Poor Mary, in her old age, incapacitated by health problems, struggling on her own but fortunately helped by Jenny, herself of limited mobility.
