SIR – The next few weeks will see strong words exchanged on the matter of welfare cuts for the poorest in society. The Government will say these cuts are necessary to ‘reduce the deficit’, but what precisely is the deficit?

The deficit referred to as ‘the difference between income and government spending as a percentage of GDP’ and in real terms, it means absolutely nothing to you or me.

All this nonsense is designed to blind us, the voters, into believing that the coalition is acting in our interests. They are not – they are acting in the best interests of their own upper-middle-class tribe. The wealthy, landed, stock-broker, fox-hunting set from which most of the (Tory) cabinet spring.

What all political parties are curiously silent about is the fact that in two years they have had to borrow £400 billion just to keep the country’s head above water. This is the real elephant in the room. Sooner or later, the country must either lose its ‘triple A’ borrowing status, or the interests rates will increase. Either of those eventualities will commence a landslide into financial chaos. Can anybody guess which particular tribe will be buffered from the effects? Correct.

Christopher Hindle, Osterley Grove, Bradford