The prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, has set out what he requires of people working for him (“‘Work with us, not against us’: Cummings warned over civil service shake-up plan”, News). It is also possible to list qualities that someone who is to be in charge of employees should possess. Foremost among them, I think, would be good interpersonal skills. An employer or manager is entitled to expect hard work and cooperation from subordinates, but should also bear in mind their need for a reasonable environment and work satisfaction. A good manager does not threaten to “bin you within weeks if you don’t fit” or fetch a police officer to eject an employee summarily. Sorry, I’m afraid Cummings has failed the interview. It’s a pity his employer hasn’t realised that... yet.
Graham Grafton
Bradfield, Manningtree
Essex
What a remarkable man Dominic Cummings is. He even merits a spread in your paper. Toby Helm advises him to cease denigrating senior civil servants if he wants their cooperation in dragging our 18th-century civil service into the present century. I believe this long-overdue modernisation to be an archetype of the well-known system inertia principle: namely, no system ever changes until it becomes impossible for it to preserve the status quo. Dominic Cummings has, over the last three years, shown himself to be just the man to deal with this particular SIP.
Doug Clark
Currie, Midlothian
Don’t knock electric cars
Critics of the electric car will never be satisfied until a man with a red flag has to walk in front of every electric vehicle (“Environmentally friendly electric cars: the enemy of the pedestrian?”, Cash). Every pedestrian should take personal responsibility for their own safety when in public spaces. Similarly, as an electric car driver, I fully accept my responsibilities in accordance with the Highway Code and the consequences of ignoring those responsibilities.
The electric car is a great leap forward in improving the quality of our environment. Local councils and central government should be at the front of embracing these new technologies, rather than pretending that they don’t have a role to play. Thus the UK has missed the economic benefits of wind power blade manufacture, and now has not given any encouragement for Elon Musk to set up his first manufacturing plant here, despite the UK being his stated first preference. Our cousins on mainland Europe have a much more accomplished approach to assimilating electric cars in their towns and cities. It is the fossil fuel vehicle, and local and central government, which should have a red flag warning of the environmental dangers ahead.
Ian Hankinson
Humberston, Lincolnshire
Keep social services local
Dan Poulter’s call to “pool budgets through a single health and social care commissioning model” may be well intended but the inevitable displacement of local government responsibility for the provision of social care would be a retrograde step (“Johnson must satisfy voters by unifying NHS and social care”, Commentary). What is required is a substantial increase in the funding of social services provided by local authorities working alongside the NHS and accountable to the community.
Jeremy Beecham
House of Lords, London SW1 (and former chairman of Newcastle city council’s social services committee)
Of the Earth, not above it
“There is nowhere we can appreciate our planet more than from out there”, according to your editorial on space exploration, but this reflects a serious error in patterns of thought, an error that is arguably at the root of the climate and ecological emergency (“From up there, the perils facing Earth are brought into sharp focus”).
The first Earthrise photograph in 1968 was acclaimed as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”. But since then, human destruction of the Earth has continued and accelerated. This view from outside is not a shift in perspective, but, rather, an extension of Enlightenment dualism. Dualism divides mind from physical reality. It implies a world of inert matter, operating according to causal laws, with no subjectivity or intelligence, no intrinsic purpose or meaning. It underlies the conceit that humans alone have the capacity for rational thought and action and for giving meaning to the world. As French philosopher Bruno Latour writes in Facing Gaia, Earth is “no longer a spectacle that we can appreciate from a distance. We are part of it.”
One may grasp a more profound view of the interconnected Earth by walking the banks of the River Dart and seeing how the rain, the trees, the moss, the rocks, the river all participate in the long-term carbon cycle, than from the view-from-a-distance of space.
Peter Reason
University of Bath
Hit airlines where it hurts
Clive Coen is right that we need to reduce the number of flights rather than simply the number of fliers (Letters). However, he misses the point that the former depends on the latter. Airlines do not care about climate change and will continue to operate flights providing they are profitable. But the current cheap fares depend on aircraft being filled to near capacity. Therefore only a relatively small number of people avoiding flying and leaving empty seats can make a route unprofitable and subject to withdrawal. I write as someone who has taken only one holiday by air in more than 25 years. I have enjoyed exploring my own country and have avoided the hell that is modern air travel.
Nigel Long
Keynsham, Somerset
From one hero to another
In her article about Chiune Sugihara, Jennifer Rankin mentioned Jan Zwartendijk, Dutch honorary consul and Philips director in Kaunas, Lithuania (“My father, the quiet hero: how Japan’s Schindler saved 6,000 Jews”, News). Zwartendijk’s role was vital: he gave refugees fake destination visas to Curaçao. Those visa recipients, including my grandfather, then went to Sugihara to request a transit visa. Without Zwartendijk’s destination visas, Sugihara’s transit visas would have been useless paper.
These two compassionate, courageous men (who never met) took great risks at a perilous time by responding to the human crisis on their doorstep. While there is an active movement promoting Sugihara, Zwartendijk’s equal participation is rarely acknowledged. Zwartendijk took enormous risks, jeopardising his family’s life. In Lithuania, the Soviets could have sent them to Siberia. Upon return to the Netherlands, he lived in constant fear that his 2,139 destination visas might be discovered and his family murdered during the ensuing four years of Nazi occupation.
Zwartendijk was a modest man who did not talk about his deeds. His widow didn’t write a promotional biography. His family remains humble. The Dutch government apologised only in 2019 for never commending him. Every narrative must include the work of both men. We survivors must ensure Zwartendijk receives an equal place in history.
Arlette Liwer-Stuip
The Hague, the Netherlands
Maigret le magnifique
Every month for the last six years, I have received a phone message from Waterstones informing me that my latest Maigret was in and could be collected, but, sadly, these calls will cease in the next week or so (“Bistro, calvados, pipe… a corpse. Why Maigret is thrilling a new generation”, Focus).
What an inspired idea it was of Penguin to reissue all 75 of Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels in sequence so that we could properly get to know our favourite French flic, the ever-patient Madame Maigret and Lucas, Lapointe, Janvier and co at the Quai des Orfèvres, and occasionally accompany the detective chief inspector out into the provinces when he was not taking on Paris’s seedy underworld.
Every story is superbly crafted, with not a word wasted. They are quite simply a smashing read that I would recommend to anyone.
Jack Critchlow
Torquay, Devon
