WE read in the paper recently about the proposed increase in the minimum wage or living wage and the effect that this will have on industry and the failure of companies to be able to honour this proposal.

I have been in business most of my life and I am proud of the fact that I have always paid a fair wage and I am very critical of employers for whatever reason who do not pay their employees a living wage and feel very strongly that they should not be in business.

My dictionary says that slavery is forcing people to work in conditions of drudgery and I would add that slavery is also having to work for a weekly wage that is below the cost of living and a standard of living that a worker should reasonably expect in the twenty-first century.

I must ask the question why are there so many people employed by our council and other public bodies paid over £100,000 a year while there are people in the same organisations earning eighty percent less?

I am told so many good causes that depend on ordinary people’s donations are paying their chief executive and others six figure salaries.

I would apply for one of these lucrative jobs, but my conscience would not allow.

Offer me and most other people the job of a council chief executive or a refuse lorry driver at the same money, I know which one I and others would take, so why pay the chief executive up to ten times more with a very lucrative pension?

One of the reason why our employers are unable to pay good wages is because we are giving foreign countries our lucrative jobs.

I am not a lover of windmills, but should we be building our own? At one time the British car was the envy of the word.

There is now much interest in electrically-driven cars which the Chinese have recognised and are now manufacturing, why not the UK?

The British government has signed a contract with the Chinese to build our nuclear plants – the Chinese? Their Communist government and the conditions their workers have to endure is little better than North Korea. Have we gone mad? With respect what we need are politicians to run the country with mud on their boots and oil on their fingers.

SIR ERIC HOWELLS CBE

Llanddewi Velfrey