MADAM – “There’s no money left” was apparently the message left by the last chief secretary to the Treasury.

The incoming Tories, of course and the Daily Mail etc. chose to forget that Reginald Maudling had left a very similar note for the incoming Labour government in 1964 (not that I remember that far back, of course.) So where had the money gone?

I have been wondering ever since 2010.

If I take money out of the cash point and spend it, at least I can point to what I have spent it on.

So had the government money dissolved or melted or something?

If it wasn’t in circulation it must be in a bank somewhere or in someone’s wallet.

In the last few days it seems we may have found out.

It was there all along, but it was being looked after by HSBC in a special bank they had set up in Switzerland.

The trouble was, they forgot to tell us and it was only thanks to a Frenchman who worked at the bank and heard that we were getting a “bit short” and decided to tell HMRC that he was looking after it for us.

When they found out, they realised there were a lot of very rich British people, ‘hedge funds’ and companies like Amazon and Starbucks and Google that don’t like paying tax like the rest of us and some of them give cash presents to the Tory election campaign. So, rather than upset influential people and cause a scandal or three in the press, they were given the chance to pay some money back and nothing more would be said, except perhaps “we are all in this together”.

With an ever-growing demand for foodbanks and the prospect of austerity for many years to come for “those hard-working families,” the Tories are reported to be spending more than £100,000 per month on their election Facebook campaign alone.

They have been given £19million by their hedge fund friends, so they can afford to bombard every address in the country with inane propaganda telling us how well off we all are in case we had forgotten, or just hadn’t noticed.

According to George Osborne, “backing savers is part of our long-term plan,” so we have given all the over-65s the opportunity to buy high-interest bonds. which is going to cost the rest of us £350million.

I suppose he knows the rest of us haven’t got enough to save anyway, but he also knows of course that the average age of members of the Tory party is nearly 70 and they are being “persuaded” to vote in a particular way in May.

Howard Price

Nailsworth