YOUR LETTERS

YOUR correspondent Graham Phillips reports (MDB June 13th) that Gordon Brown et al has run up a debt of 175 billion pounds.
Would that were true! This sum of money is not our national debt but solely what we have to borrow to keep going this year. The true facts as to our financial situation are very hard to come by, because we are forced to have to live on a diet of spin when it comes to the activities of our government. However, by listening to parliamentary debates and scanning the more serious newspaper columnists, I have gleaned the following: In his reply to the Chancellor's budget day address in April 2008 (which was before the financial collapse) Nick Clegg, the leader of the Lib-dems revealed that our national debt then stood at two trillion pounds. (I have checked this with Hansard). Three weeks ago, David Cameron during Prime Minister's question time said that since the financial collapse Britain has borrowed a further 1.7 trillion pounds. The Times just a few days ago reported that The Bank of England is to print 150 billion pounds this year and even more next year. Lastly, just to pay the interest on these debts will cost around 50 billion pounds this year, but will rise as we borrow more and more. Sir the only reading one can give such a desperate state of affairs is that Britain is dead broke and that our future is very grim indeed - no matter who is in power. But when taken together with the situation in other countries - read about California's collapse into bankruptcy in today's Times (June 13) - one is left with the question: is capitalism itself finished?

Sincerely, David Lee

DEAR SIR, ON a 24 hour clock, man appears in our planet's creation a few seconds before midnight. It is mathematically improbable that Man, a highly organized creation, could have appeared out of proteinaceous primal soup in a 2-mile deep Atlantic boiling water spring and mutated into his present form by “accident” - given the very short time span available. Any other speculation is mere superstition. Evolution did indeed occur as fossil evidence has archived, but the final aim, from that very first mutative change, was always in the end, to be the appearance of man. There is actually therefore no contradiction with Darwin's theories. God was that unforeseen force, like gravity, the hand that guided and directed evolution until man appeared. Each mutation in the evolutionary chain followed divine will. Evolution was not an accident.

Dr Garry Bonsall
Pollensa Bahai Community