Martin Broderick appears to inhabit a realm beyond criticism (Oxford Mail, December 14). Tax the rich, he says. And the rich are going to just sit there and let it happen, like Osama bin Laden in his cave waiting for American forces to arrive?

Let's try and inject a bit of economic reality into this. Our beloved free marketeers will do no such thing. They will upend themselves and move to a country which offers them a better deal tax-wise. They are already shifting businesses to the Third World where they can employ people for the cost of a bowl of rice.

In the 1970s, when such ideas were tried (80 or 90 per cent tax rates), all monies were quickly moved into offshore accounts making them untaxable. People even lived abroad to avoid paying.

I don't recall social deprivation benefiting in any way from such policies. On the contrary, I seem to recall it was a period of social and industrial unrest with three-day weeks and power cuts. 'Tax the Rich' policies are no longer a workable strategy, at least on a large scale.

Scrapping tuition fees will not "open up the doors for many working class people" as they are now unaffected by them. It is only the sons and daughters of the rich who face problems.

Even then, the payback threshold set at earnings of £15,000 a year will mean that those affected will still be £400-£500 a month better off than the average Co-op worker.

What scrapping tuition fees will do, of course, is to allow all those who opted out of the state system at secondary level to live off the taxpayer. Nice life if you can afford it.

The picture Mr Broderick attempts to paint of all these poor middle-class students standing on street corners with begging bowls in hand would be sad were it not so totally naive. ALAN PAGE, Iffley Road, Oxford