• I READ your leader column and agree with much you said, (We need a way out of the current stagnant status quo, Comment, January 5).

I saw the lady who sadly passed away named Maria or Lidia quite often, (Woman who lived in makeshift camp in Kentish Town Road dies in street, January 5). I was going to buy her breakfast in McDonald’s – where she often went – when I saw her next, though that will now not happen.

The system is clearly failing people who are just falling through the cracks and more money is required.

The principal reason for all these problems dates back to the coalition government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg with George Osborne as chancellor when the biggest cuts ever in budgets were implemented and not reversed in any way.

If this had not occurred we might have been in a better place after the Covid-19 pandemic and dealing with the current crisis in Ukraine.

Cameron and Osborne would not build any social housing as it would create more Labour voters according to Clegg. While that may be largely be true it is not always the case and completely patronising as property owners don’t always vote Conservative.

The point is that many of the people in those homes do proper jobs rather than sucking up to bankers or oligarchs which is the world that Cameron and Osborne inhabit.

The population should not have to pay the price for the utter failure of the collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock in 2008 due to totally inept management.

This is not even capitalism, where failed businesses are bailed out by the taxpayer rather than allowed to fail. The politicians should have ensured the boards were left with nothing.

Yet, as we know, politicians often have jobs while in politics and afterwards. And, as many of these are banking directorships, they were not going to bite the hand that feeds them.

PAUL BONNY, NW5