Look, austerity is not the right way to go

SIR – We are constantly fed the message that austerity is the only way. The historian Richard J Evans wrote recently: “There seems little realisation that cutting government expenditure reduces demand and sends the economy into a tailspin, reducing tax revenues and prompting further government cuts… “Businesses go bankrupt, banks crash, civil servants are sacked, pay is cut, benefits are slashed, public services are shattered. It is not just the young, or the unemployed, who are affected. The whole of society is affected by it.”