OUR AM, Vaughan Gething, is right to remind us about those facing hunger at Christmas but where is Labour's rage against the policies which mean that hunger once again stalks our land just as surely as in the hungry thirties when austerity in Germany led to the rise of Hitler?

This Christmas we also remember the Christmas Truce 100 years ago, which should have become a permanent one to break the stalemate of trench warfare, but thousands more had to be sacrificed before an Armistice brought a 20 year reprieve in the slaughter then extended to innocent civilians. Ironically, Germany is now repeating that dire mistake of austerity for the whole Eurozone and fascism is once again on the rise in Europe finding scapegoats for government failure to invest in jobs and housing.

Now food banks replace the fairer system of post war ration books when Labour restricted consumerism in order to invest in the welfare state generation who grew up to tower over their parents growing up in the hungry thirties.

Parts of Wales have made so little progress since then that they are poor enough to qualify for EU assistance to help boost jobs and skills in an economy where our greatest weakness is the lack of a skilled workforce after the Thatcher years starved our schools of resources.

We have neglected technical education ever since in an education system where the quality of children's secondary education, if English medium, is largely determined by where their parents can afford to buy a house.

The only nationalism that matters is cultural but now music is under threat in our cash strapped schools, and we are losing libraries, concert halls and theatres, as well as buses.

All these losses result from the devolution of austerity to local government and council tax, which only pays a small part of the cost, is broken.

We should all rage against this dismal failure to learn the lessons of history.

Margaret Phelps

Penarth

Vale of Glamorgan