I WISH to respond to Godfrey Bloom’s thoughts in Letters on June 1 – “If you do not work in the private sector or you are a welfare recipient, you are part of the problem, not the solution.”

Well, Mr Bloom, as an employee of the public sector, the father of a seriously ill child who is a benefit recipient and the husband to a wife who had to give up her public-sector job to become a full-time carer, who by the way is now also is a benefit recipient, it would seem that we are the problem.

Please advise us on what we need to do to become the solution.

Then tell me, Mr Bloom, when are you going to stop being part of the problem? Your salary and expenses come out of the public purse as well.

I have a few suggestions for you if you find yourself struggling, some of which could not possibly be printed.

Rob Oliver, Crombie Avenue, York.

• IT IS ironic that Godfrey Bloom, who as an MEP is in receipt of £90,000 of public money per annum, should criticise overpaid public servants.

He does not describe what the European Union, whose policies he was elected to shape, does to encourage the growth in private sector, which he is calling for.

What are or should the EU or the UK government be doing to prevent the loss of jobs in this area caused by the collapse of English Village Salads, because its main customer, an American-owned supermarket, is sourcing from an area where labour costs are lower?

What should the EU, and the UK government, do to prevent the private-sector care home company Southern Cross going into receivership and creating unemployment in the area, because its funding from local councils has been reduced as a result of the spending cuts?

A government can create jobs in the public sector; it is virtually powerless to create private-sector jobs other than providing businessmen with taxpayers’ money, as is proposed in the privatisation of the NHS.

We can no longer have any faith in giving public money to the financial sector in the vain hope it will “trickle down”.

Maurice Vassie, Deighton, York.