THE easiest way to get into manufacturing in the US is to commit a crime.

Not too serious (it doesn’t have to be) but sufficient to ensure a decent spell of incarceration.

You will become part of a highly productive and profitable organisation in which the workers are not allowed to benefit (it’s a punishment, after all) but the organisers of the Government approved racket make themselves a fortune.

In the UK the Tory approach is different. They propose that in the future ‘criminals’ (define ‘criminal’ – petty thieves? serial rapists? bankers?) will do ‘hard work’ (breaking stones? picking oakum? paying themselves outrageous bonuses?) for four days a week.

On the fifth day, they have to look for work presumably in competition with the disabled who aren’t disabled enough.

But considering the current high level of unemployment, the proposal prompts an obvious question: what work?

G SAMSON, Preston Road, Abingdon