MEL Stride MP in his latest column says that the most basic economic law is 'if you produce more efficiently than others you destroy them'.

Mr Stride does not understand economics. He invents economic laws that do not exist.

The first law of economics is generally regarded as the Law of Supply and Demand, a simple and well tested theory that the price of a good varies according to its supply and the demand for it.

The 'most basic economic law' that Mr Stride claims to know was soundly trashed by David Ricardo in the early 19th century.  Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage states that countries gain from trade when the relative costs of production are different, even if one country is more efficient in the production of all goods.

Mr Stride is not aware of a near 200-year-old economic discovery that has been shown to be true again and again. Part of an MP's task is to look after our economic well-being. It is a tragic situation when that MP is not only happy to display his ignorance of that aspect of his responsibility, but does not even have the advisers who can educate him.

Yours in sorrow.

Doug Young

St James Court

Okehampton