Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• HOW did we get here?

Pitifully poor state pensions, absurdly low sickness benefit, low wages, soaring rents and – horror – food banks.

I’m in my early 80s now and although things could be really tough when I was a child we always had a sense that things were on the up.

We became better off than our parents had been. The economy always seemed to boom more than it had just busted. Big money was made.

But now? Where has all that wealth gone? Our grandchildren have no chance of getting a home except at an unaffordable price.

For friends who have now fallen on hard times the old support networks of the 1950s have gone and the state they’ve paid taxes to all their lives is pleading poverty.

The party’s clearly over. And I don’t just mean the Conservative one!

R EVANS, NW5