Guardian commentators stress the risks to the euro and the EU itself of not accommodating a Greek default. That country’s flight from both euro and union, they say, would be fearfully dangerous for currency and institution. This is one-sided to the point of being one-eyed. What will happen to both if other hard-pressed countries can default and receive indefinite loans carrying optional repayment? In the same deluded spirit, Aditya Chakrabortty (Opinion, 7 July) laments the 2011 appointment in Italy of an unelected technocrat, Mario Monti, and fears something similar in Greece. Dr Monti (technocracy), replacing the buffoon populist, Silvio Burlusconi (democracy), put the Italian economy back into working shape. Don’t basic rules matter?
Edward Pearce
York
• If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote (Bertrand Russell’s 1950 Nobel prize lecture)?
Emma Rose Barber
Ash, Kent
