When did we become so irrational and innumerate as a nation? - Yorkshire Post Letters

If we are to believe what a consensus of media reports would indicate, our present government and its Prime Minister have lapsed from almost record popularity to similarly record unpopularity in just five months or so.

At the time of the general election, there was little opposition to the charge that most of our public services (health, education, law enforcement etc) had lapsed into seriously low levels of effectiveness, nor that they all required radical improvements to their quality of provision.

It is difficult to see how such improvements could be brought about except by significant increases in investment, as well as any other efficiency related changes that could be identified - the two would necessarily go hand in hand.

But here we are at the end of election year, and Kier Starmer is being blamed on the one hand for failing in a few months to rectify the damage of years (even decades) and on the other for presuming to increase government expenditure; some would go further and lament his failure to reduce that expenditure.

Every penny of government expenditure must come from us, the people - we will only get what we pay for.

Surely that simple statement should be undeniable, which makes the comments of opposition spokespersons so surprising. Their hubris is astonishing.

One must therefore wonder, when did we as a nation become collectively so illogical, so irrational and frankly so innumerate?