Aditya Chakrabortty (Britain’s rich are thrust into the future. The poor get kicked back into the past, 28 July) quotes Iain Duncan Smith: “I welcome food banks. I welcome decent people in society trying to help others who have fallen into difficulty.” In my naivety I thought that taxation was the means by which we as a good society can “help others who have fallen into difficulty”. But this government clearly does not believe in this, and wants us to believe that somehow taxation is something evil, not the force for good that it should be by allowing us all to contribute to the common good. Do we have to conclude that the government is not made up of “decent people”?
Ian Arnott
Peterborough
• As a professor in an aspiring university, as well as a recipient of free school meals and friends whose parents knew enough to let me eat with them during holidays, I feel sickened and ashamed at the hunger of children at large today, as described by Aditya Chakrabortty. Our middle class often cannot fully imagine persistent and dependable hunger, and there are no defensible reasons for allowing any child not to reach and exceed their potential. All parties agree this. Let’s mobilise, and if you received free meals then talk about it. There is no shame.
Professor Craig Richardson
Charlbury, Oxfordshire
• To assist our judgment of competing philosophies in the Labour leadership election, why not a test from the real world? Get each candidate to explain how they would deal with the shameful state of Britain explored in Aditya Chakrabortty’s article about a charity feeding hungry kids and parents in the summer holidays. No generalities, please. What would they do? A public debate might also help inform all the electorate, not just Labour, as to the country we live in.
Ric Carey
Portsmouth
