WE heard it from Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s when she told hard-up students to live off porridge and water.

Now it is the turn of the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith to dish out the gruel.

In a recent radio interview he insisted he could live on as little as £53 a week.

If this is the case, how come Mr Duncan Smith and MPs like him have to claim tens of thousands of pounds in expenses, and dine on taxpayersubsidised food and drink?

Stephen Dixon, Redcar.