Open letter to David Cameron: Why is it that you are issuing statements that are designed as a sort of ‘wake-up call’ to the public when in fact the wake-up call should have been taken on board by yourself and your star player ministers, who have been more than instrumental in putting this country in the mess it is in now.

You were quite happy to be tripping around the world at public expense, aggravating the countries that are now in the midst of terror, openly bragging to them and the media that you were going to smash their organisations and like I forecast to you and William Hague (aka Dangerous Willie), it has all come back at not just you, but it is looking as though it will be coming back at the whole United Kingdom.

How have you got the gall and the audacity to make a statement to the country that we have a gap in our armoury, Mr Cameron? What armoury are we talking about? It has all been sold off. Even the aircraft carrier Illustrious has gone now, disbanded on August 28, while all the tensions were rising.

Yes Mr Cameron, there is a gap in our armoury. There is also a gap in our borders and immigration, there is a gap in our police strength, there is a gap in our prison services and there is a gap in our education services and health service and there is also a gap in our fire services and it is all your fault.

It was you who thought you were clever in making the armed forces redundant and getting rid of the armed defence systems and aircraft, Royal Navy ships and aircraft carriers that we had; savaging the numbers of fully warranted police we had patrolling our streets; even closing the fire stations and making experienced fire crews redundant; closing the prisons and reducing the staffing levels, leaving the country at no more than ‘tick-over’ on the drivel that we had remaining to protect our homeland after your savage attacks on the country’s essential and emergency services.

The trouble with you is that you are a camera fanatic. Wherever there is a camera, there is David Cameron fighting to get in the front of it, telling everyone what good news you have for them and what good things you are doing. But in the end the outcome is all failure after failure.

Do you honestly think that we can fight (Islamist extremists) when we have the relatives of people whose sons and daughters have been radicalised and whose sons and daughters have gone to fight for (Islamist extremists)?

How would you know the current situation is far more serious and dangerous than this country has ever faced before?

You are only in your 40s and would have to struggle to remember the terrible times we had in the early 1970s when the IRA was striking here, there and everywhere.

Brian Dean, Hillyfields, Loughton.