I was ambling out of Padstow, seawards, past a Cornish hedge, when a boy, aged four or five, paused with delight in his eyes at some random ears of corn protruding from a wall. He turned to his mother and in excited tones inquired: “Is this the very first corn wall?” She replied: “Don’t be silly” and walked on ahead of him, inattentive to the joy evaporating from his face and not noticing the sadness moving across mine.
There is a more damaging phrase than “be a man” (“Boys don’t cry”, Magazinek) and it is this instruction not to play with words and ideas, snuffing out the fire of fun and imagination, and I hazard capturing the worldview of the tedious, target-led education ministers of recent years in their striving for a soulless future for our children, irrespective of gender.
Alan Coombe
Independent adviser on child protection and early years
London NW8
Save our souls
I am a poor supporter of the C of E. I was christened a Methodist and hardly ever go to church. Despite that, I am appalled by the prospect, covered in chilling detail by your article “Is this a new crisis of faith?” (News), that the Anglican church is being entrusted to the evangelicals. The panel describes “the authority of the Bible as paramount” for evangelicals and yet Ric Thorpe, “church-planting” bishop of Islington, is quoted at the end of the piece saying: “If you’re stuck in the past, you will decline because you’re locking yourself into a certain way of doing things and everyone else moves on.”
It is a long time since I studied theology but I recall that the Gospels, some of the “newest” parts of the New Testament, were written about 150 years after the death of Christ. If their authority is paramount to evangelicals, in a fundamentalist way, who is actually “living in the past” here ?
Ben Entwistle
Crewe
Cheshire
How to scalp the touts
Secondary theatre ticket sellers are nothing but criminals when asking more than £8,000 for the Harry Potter play (“What sorcery is this? A £140 ticket for new Harry Potter play now costs £8,327”, News). When I buy my train tickets online from Great Western I collect them from a machine that requires me not only to insert the credit card I paid with but also to type the alpha-numeric code my purchase generated. I believe the Odeon also requires my payment card before releasing tickets.
Theatres (and music venues suffering this plague) can eliminate extortionists at a stroke by emulating train companies and cinemas.
Rob Harris
Westbury-on-Severn
Gloucestershire
We can’t all graduate on top
As a retired lecturer, your headline “Quarter of UK graduates are low earners 10 years after university” (News) comes as no surprise to me. When I was first appointed, the university offered a “specialist” management degree that was accepted as the best in the country. We had amazing students who could command huge salaries in their placement year. Then we were encouraged to increase numbers and offered “general” management courses. The quality of the intake declined and some ended up with only unpaid work-experience in their placement year.
It is simple mathematics – the current graduate population is significantly greater than the number of decent jobs. It is only worthwhile going to university if you have genuine academic ability and are offered a place from a “top 10” institution; otherwise, you’ll be better off getting a job where you start at the bottom and work your way up.
Malcolm Howard
Banstead
Surrey
An easy fix for the iPlayer
Why does the BBC need to snoop on people using the iPlayer (John Naughton, New Review)? Why doesn’t Aunty do what Sky does and require users to log into an account before allowing them to stream programmes. If you haven’t got a licence then you can’t log in – what’s so difficult about that? Sky Go has been doing this for years. Also, it could then permit licence payers to view iPlayer when out of the UK.
Ed Marshall
Scrooby
Notts
Wrong track, Mr Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn is wrong to suggest that Virgin Trains is paying less to taxpayers than the state-owned operator (directly operated railways) that previously ran the east coast franchise (interview, News). In fact, we will pay significantly more to the Treasury: £3.3bn over the eight years of our franchise, compared to £1bn paid over five years by DOR. And our plans will benefit customers as well as taxpayers. Since taking over the route in 2015, we have embarked on a £140m programme of investment and in two years will introduce our brand new fleet of Azuma trains to the route, allowing us to accelerate journeys and increase seating capacity from King’s Cross by 28% during the peak period.
David Horne
Managing director
Virgin Trains, east coast, York
