A letter in the Northern Echo yesterday bemoans the lack of interest and pride the young have about our history.

Any pride which ordinary people have is for those among us who have fought the established authority to get what decent life improvements we have, and for the cream of our youth who have fought and died to keep it, often to protect the source of real wealth the rich enjoy.

In recent times we have seen those we send to represent us us in the corridors of power scheming, fiddling and cheating to extract as much as they can back from us whilst filling their own pockets from the public purse for their own gain, enjoyment and pleasure.

They have taken bribes to favor the rich while standing by as our savings and pensions have been gambled away by those who rewarded them.

Now that the price for this has to be paid, they are "taking hard decisions" for us to suffer the cost on their behalf from what little, by their standards, we have managed to graft for and save during a lifetime.

In return they are making tiny changes to the rules which keep us in our place as they get even richer and the country gets more and more in hock. Our manufacturing capacity lost and at the mercy of the world bank.

It's not our history we should be concentrating on but our future, if we have one. There needs to be big big changes to stop the rot and get the nation united, or we will not be going anywhere under our own power.