New economic model needed
Will Hutton is correct: crashing markets are telling us something and we do need “a wholesale change in economic thinking” (22 January). We must redress the imbalance between world finance and labour markets, but trade union resistance and top-down regulation are not enough.
To say “great companies need to be allowed to purpose themselves around creating value rather than dancing to the interests of disengaged shareholders” sounds like whistling in the wind. What if shareholders are not disengaged at all but in the driving seat? Aren’t many company CEOs themselves shareholders, rewarded in share options, empowered to buy back shares for their companies with more interest in quick profits than social value?
Here in south Wales, the future of former British Steel hangs in the balance while its Indian owners Tata axe jobs wholesale. Up the Severn at Hinkley Point, the future of nuclear power is entrusted by a privatising UK government to state enterprise in France and China.
With such a precarious and top-heavy economy, we could do worse than begin rebuilding from the ground, applying common sense and social democracy to the direction of the corporate industries and services that shape our lives.
The words “company”, “shares” and “ownership” have been hijacked by bosses and wealthy backers. Time now to reclaim them, in law and common usage, to ensure that commonwealth means what it says.
Greg Wilkinson
Swansea, UK
• Will Hutton does a fine job of explaining the problems facing capitalism in the near term. However, neither he, nor anyone else I’ve run across, has analysed the long-term problems facing capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic ideology based on the premise of unending growth. But infinite growth in a finite system is a logical impossibility. It is past time for the capitalist ideologues to recognise this and to develop a sustainable ideology.
Molly M Radke
Poulsbo, Washington, US
• Yes, “It’s clear what needs to happen”: we probably all agree. But what we need to know is how?
Sally Litherland
Salisbury, UK
Hope for a resurgent left
Ewen MacAskill’s report Revealed: how Jeremy Corbyn is reviving the Labour party (22 January) is encouraging. Similarly encouraging is Justin Trudeau’s win in the last Canadian election and Bernie Sanders’s increasing popularity over Hillary Clinton in opinion polls.
These three factors give grounds to hope that rightwing extremism in the west is on the wane. The rise in popularity of both Corbyn and Sanders expresses the hope of British and American voters – indeed, the world – for a peaceful future, regardless of what the rightwing diehards say about them. The west desperately needs some strong leaders who have the courage of their convictions.
Bill Mathew
Melbourne, Australia
European nuclear deterrent
According to Matthew d’Ancona in Big issues are getting a low billing (22 January) the major twin problems facing Britain’s Tory and Labour parties are Trident and the EU. Since both are interconnected, both could be solved at once by the party that had the vision to recognise that Britain’s long-term security interests are best served by retaining its membership in an EU that develops a common nuclear deterrent.
Britain could play a major role in the development of such a European deterrent along with other EU members. Taxpayers in all EU states, including Britain, would all stand to benefit as the costs would need to be shared by all member states.
This alone represents a major reason why Britain should remain in the EU.
Christopher Ryecart
Kefermarkt, Austria
Sugar tax makes sense
The NHS chief proposes to introduce a sugar tax on hospital snacks, there being a pandemic of the so-called metabolic syndrome of obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, in parallel with the postwar threefold rise of sugar consumption, rising hospital costs and childhood obesity (22 January). It would seem sensible to impose a tax nationally on sugary foods, fizzy drinks and confectionery.
No doubt any proposed sugar tax will raise fierce objections from the sugar industry, similar to those raised by tobacco companies to restriction of cigarette advertising, and from the reduction of subsidies to fossil-fuel corporations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The ethical question arises as to whether short-term company profits should take precedence over long-term gains in public health.
Bryan Furnass
Canberra, ACT, Australia
Perils of a life spent online
In her opinion column (22 January), Gaby Hinsliff considers how celebrities can afford to resist compulsive email checking because they are always in demand. There is a broader and more damaging issue for a society increasingly preoccupied with expected or wanted email and social media communications. In the absence of hoped-for messages and information, the degree of anxiety experienced is only limited by the imagination of the recipient.
It is a feature of people’s obsession with virtual online life that we are increasingly detached from the true essentials that give meaning and balance to our existence. Our vulnerability in succumbing to this dependence represents a real threat to society and we should resist the expectations thrust upon us by those pedalling virtual online life.
Giles Waley
Stirling, UK
The dangers of hydropower
Hydro dams and artificial trees (15 January) demonstrate an alarming failure to understand the natural world. Hydroelectricity is not clean; it is just a different form of dirt.
Damage to fisheries is the thin end of the wedge; the real damage goes right through river systems as natural flooding is prevented and wetlands are destroyed, killing everything from birds and plants to micro-organisms. Poles and wires cut a swathe of erosion through fragile landscapes.
As for artificial trees: a tree is part of an incredibly complex eco-system. Real trees are a conduit for cycling nutrients from deep beneath the earth, and through the release of evaporation they influence the atmosphere and may trigger rain. Where the soil is too shallow for trees, try grass, which has a terrific ability to sequester carbon, and the advantage of needing to be eaten.
For the human race to survive, we need to abandon our recent obsessions with electricity and internal combustion, and realise we are part of the natural world. When we destroy it, we destroy ourselves.
Philippa Morris
Gravesend, NSW, Australia
Ultrasound and stethoscope
Your otherwise excellent article (15 January) on the future of the stethoscope implies the wrong question: is ultrasound or the stethoscope best? In fact both are very useful in competent hands; the real question is when to apply them. For example, 50% of preschool children have heart murmurs but only 1% are abnormal, which should be determined by listening alone. In the case of adults presenting with a heart attack or with heart failure, imaging the heart is of critical importance. Better teaching and skills with the stethoscope are long overdue.
John Finley
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Briefly
• The article about apartheid nostalgia and the taboo for non-white South Africans to use the beaches in that era (15 January) reminds me of a story related by a black Canadian colleague of South African birth. He took his family back to the home country during those days. One of his most difficult tasks was to restrain the children from running across the beach into the water when he stopped the rental car at a seaside site. Even harder was to explain the rationale and to convince them that they truly could not use the beach.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
• François Bostnavaron’s article Tourism set to take off in St Helena (15 January) leaves me somewhat uncertain as to where Napoleon’s remains really are. St Helena? Les Invalides in Paris? Are just a few strands of his arsenic-tainted hair buried on the island, or just his heart in Paris? If he is truly buried on St Helena, why did I think I was viewing his coffin at Les Invalides in Paris?
Linda Rickli
Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland
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