Letters: We’re all still paying for the financial crash

Don’t blame the banks?

Sir: Kate Andrews struggles to disentangle the causes of the developing cost-of-living crisis (‘Cold truth’, 19 March), with the fallout from Brexit, Covid and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine all vying for responsibility. She forgets the financial crash of 2008, when a few irresponsible banks and building societies dragged this country into a financial abyss. The jury is still out on the effect that the Bank of England’s remedy of quantitative easing has since had on inflation and wealth inequality.

We are all still paying the price for this disaster, as will be the next couple of generations. After 2008, successive governments paid for the bailout of the banks by pulling the plug on the central funding of local authorities which, contrary to popular belief, only ever got barely half of their income from council taxes. It was this that led to the hollowing out of city, county and town halls throughout the UK.