A WEEK is a long time in politics.

This week it was announced that the war in Afghanistan was officially over, but we weren’t given an explanation of why we entered into this war.

It cost 448 of our service people’s lives and ongoing misery for those returning with serious physical and mental injury. Right now they are having elections there with polling stations surrounded by armed guards and the capital city is in permanent lock down with dozens murdered every day.

The opium trade is flourishing as never before, the effects being seen in our towns and cities, yet David Cameron announced it was mission accomplished.

Then we had Vince Cable looking a little sheepish stating that the sell-off of Royal Mail was a complete success, even though the loss to the British taxpayer was estimated at about one billion pounds.

So everyone’s a winner, except the poor old public. Then our culture secretary Maria Miller is ordered to repay £5,800 over her expense claims, watered down from £45,000 by creative accounting, and veiled threats from her friends that she was reviewing the Leveson proposals on Press reform, which could stifle our free press. More worrying is the way MPs from all parties have leapt to her defence.

I will not be voting in the general election as the whole system has been hijacked by a political class of mostly privately educated career politicians.

Mr H Bradbury

Clinkham Wood