When you think about it, running the country is really quite simple.

First, get yourself voted into government – pretty simple, really, as the other inept lot are on their way out.

Announce and implement loads of radical changes (funny how nothing ever needs a little tweaking,it has to be radical).

Nobody ever gets into the history books for tweaking an opposition idea.

Then totally ignore the electorate whilst ruining the country.

You will get at least one term, but the likelihood is that you will get two before the country realises that, like the last lot, you have fouled everything up.

Take the latest monetary crisis – politicians have an history of this.

I can remember Harold Wilson devaluing the pound from $2.80 dollars to $2.40 dollars, and telling us it wouldn’t affect the pound in our pocket.

Then along came Ted Heath who floated the pound.

It duly sank to $2.00 dollars.

We also had Black Monday in 1987, when stockmarkets crashed around the world and the government didn’t see it coming.

In 1992, Britain crashed out of the ERM, losing billions with interest rates going up to 15%.

At the time, a little-known businessman, George Soros, saw what was going to happen and made himself a billion pounds out of the catastrophe.

But it was the politicians’ bad decision to put us into the ERM two years earlier that caused this.

So you see that successive governments have no real idea how to handle money – maybe I should say our money: if it was their own, it would probably be tucked away in an offshore account nice and safe from clueless governments.

It has been said, “Do not forget the past, lest history repeat itself.”

In Britain, we seem to have very short memories and the politicians are very thankful.

Stan Melling, Lower Darwen.