THE Oxfam disclosure that one per cent of the UK population owns more than 20 times the total wealth of the poorest 20% - and that this country is the most unequal in the developed world - is a Pandora’s Box of unsolved social and economic problems.

Although the Oxfam report focuses on Britain, similar wealth disparities can be found in all the major industrial countries, particularly in the world’s superpower, the USA.

The gap between the super rich and the very poor has never been wider in world history, and that atrocious gap is widening under current policies being fostered and promoted at the recent G20 Conference in China.

When just 634,000 Britons own 20 times more wealth than all the wealth possessed by the the poorest 13m, then you have a profoundly sick society that is desperately in need of major political surgery.

These gargantuan income disparities are the root cause of most of society’s major ailments – unemployment, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, malnutrition, food banks, and the break-up of families who suffer most from poverty, made ten times worse by “austerity” policies followed by Labour, Coalition and Tory governments since the stock market crash of 2008.

Even Corbyn’s Labour Party has confined itself to a return to the 50p tax rate for the rich, which is like trying to drain the ocean with a spoon.

The anger of the millions struggling to survive whilst the super-rich get ever richer is what underpinned the recent Brexit vote.

It will also be the trigger of even greater social upheavals if left unchanged by UK politicians. It is a volcano waiting to erupt.

James Roberts,

Wallasey.