Can you hear an alarm bell?

Gordon Brown has on many occasions taken credit for that "prudent" idea to make the Bank of England independent of the government. This is both a misleading and a deceptive statement, which typifies the cancer at the heart of our democracy.

As part of the Maastricht treaty, which John Major signed, all signing countries agreed to change the status of their national banks, to one of independence.

Maastricht Treaty 109(e) refers: "Each member state shall, as appropriate, start the process leading to the independence of its central bank." If you look at the Bank of England website you will see it is also called the Central Bank of the United Kingdom.

Mervyn King, the governor of the Central Bank of the United Kingdom, also sits on the general council of the European Central Bank (ECB), but he does not appear in the photograph of the general council on their website.

This week politicians have been castigating us about individual debt. But the current government debt figure is now £1,800bn, working out as £75,000 per household! Anyone hear an alarm bell?

John Galloway (Chairman UKIP North Shropshire), Shrewsbury