Councillor Jason Charalambous has asked for a cut in business rates to assist high street shop owners (‘How to make Enfield ‘business friendly’, Opinion, December 3).

Such charges are not a malign imposition on entrepreneurs but a contribution to the cost of local services. The consequent fall in income from a rates cut might cause the closure of an old peoples’ home in order to support yet another betting shop.

Retailers are already heavily subsidised from the public purse. They pay among the lowest wages in the country, their hard-working staff’s pay augmented by family tax credit and housing benefit. Aside from pensions, the majority of welfare payments go to people in work.

Sadly the councillors’ commitment to extremist free market ideology is not underpinned by a grasp of economic fact – rather like the banks whose collapse in 2008 (bailed out by hard-working taxpayers) began the current economic crisis.

Dave Young

Mandeville Rd, Southgate