Letter: Big idea is small comfort to the masses

I READ your feature 'Geoff and Martin's big idea' (Review, 24 January) with a feeling of disappointment. When will serious newspapers like your own cease declaring mythological simplicities such as 'communism is dead, everyone now agrees that markets matter . . .'?

Most sensible and informed people realise that the former Soviet Union was not a bastion of communism but a monolith of state capitalism. And I don't expect 30,000 miners and 70,000 workers in related industries would be too keen on markets that now threaten their livelihoods, not to mention the three million-plus people whose lives are already blighted by them. We don't need this kind of 'Demos' but 'demos' of the millions who want a 'democratic radicalism' which provides jobs, homes and dignity in old age.

Mick Downes

Dundee