Comical twist of the facts; LETTERS to the EDITOR.

I WOULDN''T expect a balanced assessment of the economy from the Chairman of the Merseyside Conservatives, but Carl Cross (Letters, October 20) is almost comical in his misinterpretation of the facts.

A year ago, the world financial crisis struck with the collapse of respected banks in the USA. This destabilised banks world-wide including many in the UK. There was a real likelihood of banks not opening on Monday morning.

Salaries, pensions and other forms of income wouldn''t have been paid. When cash ran out, people wouldn''t have been able to buy food and pretty soon there wouldn''t have been any in the shops anyway.

Governments had the weekend to decide how to save the banking system. Our Labour Government, together with the USA and others, realised that the only option was to support the banks with enormous sums of money. This they did and the banks were, in the most part, saved. Trade could continue. But banks didn''t trust each other, cash became tight, people began to lose jobs. The Government responded by taking action to save as many jobs as it could. All this caused the current financial deficit which will have to be repaid.

Of course, the Tories say they disagree with the action the Government has taken. This leads us to assume they would have done nothing except slash public services since this seems to be their only policy. They would actually have allowed this country to descend into chaos.

Thank goodness David Cameron and George Osborne are mere spectators while the serious work of bringing the economy through recession is being done. They are just not up to it.

Alex Black, Chester