Letter to the Editor: Patrick O’Brian asks if those Conservative voters who chose Liz Truss as their leader, have now “seen the light” (Frankly Speaking, Cambrian News 12 October). In regards to taxation, I do not think that most Conservatives are capable of seeing the light.

Too many of them see collective community endeavour as socialism. They approve of nurturing their high culture, like the ballet, theatre, concert music, art galleries, but swimming pools, libraries, state school sports facilities, community parks, youth facilities, even the NHS, can all be thrown under the bus wheels of austerity, as long as it spares their pocket.

In the early years of Thatcher, the workforces of major construction projects were employed under a main contractor, but because this had given negotiating power to the workforce, the Tories employed their historically favourite strategy of divide and rule, creating several smaller contractor companies on a project site.

However, whether the workforce was unified or divided, everyone paid their PAYE tax, in full, and since overtime was a structural feature of construction projects, the workers invariably entered the highest tax bracket. But the workforces still retained some negotiating power, causing the Tories to further refine their divide and rule, by promoting agency employment, and yet further fragmentation.

I avoided agency work until it was inescapable, and I found myself, as a pipefitter welder in a fabrication shop in Aberdeen. I was sceptical when told I would pay little tax, and I was surprised how little I did pay. However, HMRC became worried that their captive PAYE cohort were behaving like the wider business community, and over the years they have trimmed the tax avoidance wings of agency employment.

Now it is universal, and the Tories are promising to use agency staff to break strikes, surely the ultimate in divide and rule. It is so universal that untold thousands of government and public employees use tax avoidance schemes to minimise their liability.

They are all indifferent to the public realm, like Trussian acolytes they are only in thrall to their pockets.

Roger Louvet,

Porthmadog