ALAN Johnson clearly has his head in the sky or is it in the trees?

Yes everybody should pay their fair share of taxes, but I was listening to the ex CEO of M&S, he said his annual salary was £2million and he paid 50 per cent tax, ie £1m.

You can argue was he worth £2m maybe yes/maybe no, market economy decides who gets what and if a person can command such a salary and someone is prepared to pay this, so be it, but yes, make sure he pays the tax due.

Based on the above, pro-rata, the “rich” put a substantial amount into the economy the M&S CEO tax at £1m would be the equivalent to 100s of average salary earners. However it is the masses that contribute in volume most of the tax as a collective.

Harping back to Thatcher is leap-frogging years of Labour rule and hence they have had plenty of time to reverse any of the previous government’s decisions should they have felt the actions undesirable.

With regards to the current government, they picked up a poisoned chalice. Does Alan Johnson really think that Labour would have stayed on the same course of spending? Had they done so we would now be looking at the same situation as Greece.

What is his Green Party's answer to correcting the massive burden left by the economic collapse? If he thinks taxing what would be a relatively small number of rich people pro-rata to the masses by a further 10-20pc more, then he needs to do the sums.

With regards to greed, does he own a house purchased prior to 2000? If so, would he like to pay back into the economy the 100pc increase in its value? We all took advantage of the uncapped economic boom and now we are all paying the price. Greed is not the reserve of the rich and what do we call rich?

I have a house, I have an earning potential well into six figures and drive a nice car, does this make me rich? I spend 30 weekends a year away from home and work 10-15 hour days. I currently left home on September 11 and will not return until the 29th and will be away again from October 15 for a further three weeks and I will put thousands of man hours of work into our economy paying the salary of hundreds, and yes I will pay 50pc tax. I enjoy what I do, but I also pay a price.

I can guarantee that the CEO of M&S has little or no private life, probably on his second or third marriage and does more for the economy than the average man in the street. All that glitters is not gold.

Andrew Davidson Bury