MADAM — I admit my views on both Ukip and The Daily/Sunday Mail were very low to start with, but the lazy, distorted and hypocritical letter from your correspondent Caroline Stephens, Ukip’s Parliamentary candidate, scrapes the bin.

Lazy because just a quick look at the EU website would reveal that funding was not for bin collections in Cuba but instead was under the Regional Programme to fund environmental programmes to help create the infrastructure for recycling throughout Latin America.

Clearly she has no understanding of the threat of climate change created largely in the west but requiring solutions beyond our small island or Europe.

Distorted because another quick look at the EU website also gives some interesting statistics that rather undermine Ms Stephens claims of “questionable human rights” such as a 99.8 per cent literacy rate, low infant mortality rate and judged as of “high human development”.

Hypocritical because the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government alone have forced local government to make these cuts as part of their austerity programme.

Apart from the fallout of the US subprime mortgage crisis, falling tax receipts have emptied government coffers and why is this?

Mass unemployment; a move to self employment as an alternative for some that generates too little income to tax; a lack of will to pursue corporation tax, which runs at billions and billions; a lack of action on the spiralling bonus culture; an unwillingness to regulate the banks and financial sector not to mention the staggering increase in the balance of payment debt since the coalition came to power.

The only true part of her letter is in referring to people having to work hard for their money — harder and harder for less and less, thereby forcing many to claim top up benefits and use food banks in order to survive.

Perhaps Ms Stephens was having a Violet Elizabeth Bott moment when writing her letter and just needed to scream and scream, it happens, but now please some grown up political and economic discourse aimed at saving our NHS, aimed at providing a living wage for all and yes, facing our responsibilities in the world.

Judi Jackson

Haresfield