In reflecting on ministerial incompetence (“The record-beating cost to the taxpayer of this shockingly wasteful government”, Comment), Andrew Rawnsley says: “The worst that the most egregious ministerial bunglers can expect is to be quietly dropped or gently moved to another department when a cabinet reshuffle comes around.”
Is it not also disgraceful that failure in office is often followed by elevation to the House of Lords? For example, Andrew Lansley, formerly the health secretary, was the mastermind behind a big reorganisation of the NHS in 2012, a plan that has now been found to be so unsatisfactory that it is to be binned. Lansley is now in the upper House, that ludicrously bloated and expensive retirement home for politicians. And we can be sure that, eventually, he will be joined there by the likes of Williamson, Gove, Hancock, Patel and Johnson.
Dr David Mervin
Arnside, Cumbria
Andrew Rawnsley’s article about the shattering cost of Johnson’s government’s incompetence overlooked one point. The eye-watering cost of the NHS test and trace programme looks even worse when you consider that its operation did not extend north of the border. In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon’s government did what Johnson’s did not; it used the expertise of public health and local authority officials rather than expensive outsourcing to private providers.
Gavin Brown
Linlithgow, West Lothian
The perils of foraging
I read with interest and concern your article on foraging (“Wild garlic, nettles and berries… how foraging went mainstream”, News), which suggests that increasing numbers of people are foraging in parks and the countryside. Nowhere in the article were readers reminded that foraging can cause damage and could be construed as wilful damage.
Parks are public places where plants are there for the visual pleasure of all, not to be torn up or trampled by people picking them. Farmers and landowners will not appreciate foragers tramping over fields and woodland in pursuit of “free” food.
Elizabeth Wood
Brede, Hastings
Our favourite fantasy
David Olusoga argues persuasively for the operation of “fantasy” in the current royal controversy (“The royals are just like much of our press – trapped in a fantasy version of Britain’s past”, Comment). However, myth-making is even more heavily implicated than he describes, for the royal family itself is the nation’s favourite fantasy. No other British institution so peculiarly combines codes of secrecy with so many willing interpreters of its affairs.
Even when criticising the family, the public constructs reassuring alternative myths with which to scold it: witness the near canonisation of Princess Diana for offering the kind of compassion that is commonplace among the general population but which, in her, somehow became a special gift all the better to contrast her with her in-laws.
These fictive royals seem indispensable to our national self-image; an image that needs constant flattering by a selectively amnesiac historical memory on the one hand and, on the other, vigilant policing by a professional commentariat, whose racial airbrush locks on to controversy with algorithmic reliability, the better to control the mood of a public too often willing to suspend its disbelief.
Paul McGilchrist
Colchester, Essex
Inbuilt misogyny of benefits
Sonia Sodha’s excellent article about male violence covers many of the things that contribute to the hostile environment that’s normal for women and girls in the UK, such as lack of education for boys about equality and the power of the internet to spread radical misogyny (“Domestic violence, refuges, rape charges… why do we get it wrong on male violence?”, Comment). She also recognises that most femicide and violence against women happens indoors, within families.
Commentators must start to highlight the inbuilt misogyny of the benefits system that traps women within those households by taking away their financial independence. Universal credit goes into a single bank account, making partners, most often women, highly vulnerable to financial control by their abusers. We’ve lived for so long with the narrative dehumanising people on benefits (“scroungers” and “benefits cheats”) that it’s preventing a debate about how the benefits system is taking away women’s legal and financial independence, and putting their lives at risk.
Deborah Fajerman
London SE26
Too much, not too little
Another article riffed on the theme of “why hair falling out affects our sense of self so deeply” (“I think I’m losing it”, Magazine). As a woman who has suffered from excess facial hair since the age of 16 (and paid for the pain of having it removed by electrolysis for the last 40 years), I am left wondering, yet again, when we are going to see articles discussing the issue of women and girls experiencing lack of self-esteem and confidence due to excess facial and body hair.
Melanie Joy
Nottingham
Let the Angel shine forth
The Angel of the North is a historic landmark in the north-east (“Now you see it… Angel of the North views at risk from new road plan”, News). As you approach Gateshead on the A1, the statue speaks of the history of the region – the metal structure that reflects the work in the shipyards.
It is beautiful as well as symbolic. To diminish its presence shows a disregard for its meaning and reflection of the history of the community. Seeing it always brings a sense of identity with the area and I admire Antony Gormley for his awareness and his beautiful work. Please let it remain a dominant feature and not obscured to ease congestion.
Heather Worsley
Teddington, London
Icebound? I should cocoa
If marine archaeologists want to find out about the effects on the human psyche caused by sitting on a boat in freezing temperatures and unable to go anywhere, there really is no need to go to the Canadian Arctic (“What really happened on the Terror? Divers plan return to Franklin wrecks”, News). Just give me a ring, I’ll talk to anyone.
Ian Grieve
Gordon Bennett
Llangollen canal
