The view that David Seymour gets from the ivory tower of the Frontier Centre is obviously very different from the rest of us who live at street level (Red Deer Express Dec. 29, 2010).

While it would be true to say that living standards have increased for ordinary people, particularly in the boom period from 1948-1974, this cannot be said of the poor and most certainly not for people in the third world.

However, from the very beginning of this period the gap between the rich and the rest of us was growing into the ever-expanding Grand Canyon that exists today.

The reforms stemming from the boom like pensions, holidays, virtual full employment can no longer be afforded and we enter a new period that will be very different to the one to which we have become accustomed.

We are invited to think that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is an un-elected tyrant, the linking of his name with President Mugabe of Zimbabwe reinforces this assertion.

David Seymour is not un-intelligent; he knows full well that the President of Venezuela has won more elections than any other modern leader and that United Nations observers, who declared them scrupulously clean, oversaw these elections.

Keith Norman Wyatt

Innisfail NDP (personal capacity)