I WISH to respond to the letter about the Remploy workers from your correspondent S Wrigley.

It is dismaying to read such a letter from someone who has experienced what it is like to be a disabled worker, but who clearly knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

"Patronising", to keep disabled people in employment? What utter rot.

That would be why so many of them held demonstrations to try to keep their factories open, so sick of being "patronised" were they.

The employees of Remploy may well have cost public money, but they would have put that money back into the economy when they spent their wages in the shops.

Instead, around 90% of those so far made redundant remain on the dole, which if you want to keep the debate on a financial footing STILL costs the taxpayer money, but leaves the former Remploy staff with far less disposable income to support the economy.

If you want instead to discuss the issue in human terms, think of the loss of dignity and independence, and the fact that they didn't have to worry so much about paying the bills while they were still being "patronised".

Labour may well have started this, I don't know: but the Tories certainly had the power to reverse the closure decision.

Instead they went ahead and closed the factories and appointed an expert in spouting irrelevant hyperbole, Esther McVey, to paint this outrage as an "opportunity" for disabled people to be "supported".

Judging purely by the figures the Remploy closures have been an unmitigated disaster; judged on a human level, they are a national disgrace.

David Elsam,
Wallasey.