Letters: Labour are showing a complete lack of empathy

The few good policy announcements seem to be getting watered down or quietly dropped. My membership card is now in the bin.
Ian Buchan

Rachel Reeves’s approach is entirely the wrong way of fixing our economy. The Tories proved that trying to cut to balance the books does not work. Investment, education and a radical rethink of our dying capitalism is the only way forward. Borrow and spend!
Adam Primhak

We voted for change. Where is the vision? Where is the bold action? Where is the strategy? Politics is about choices. Reeves and Starmer are making wrong ones that embolden the motley bunch of bigots at Reform.
Rob Allen

A one-off windfall tax of 1% on wealth is a no-brainer for Rachel Reeves. Someone worth £5m would have to cough up a mere £50,000, and have five years to pay it; £10k a year to save the nation – the rich should be queuing up for it.

A tapered capital gains tax on principal residence is also a must, and CGT should be taxed at the same level as income. It is far too easy for the well-off to structure their finances so that they only pay 24% on their unearned money.
RSP Zatzen

Listening to government excuses for not supporting Scunthorpe is so depressing. My son, an engineer, said: “How can the government get rid of Scunthorpe when they are planning to build tanks? Will we be fighting Putin with weapons made from Chinese steel?”
Judy Sims

Terrifying Trump
Re: “The choreography of fascism” by Matthew d’Ancona (TNE #429) was once again a genuinely terrifying article. I have just seen Kristi Noem, Trump’s poster girl homeland security secretary, standing in front of caged prisoners in that hellhole jail in El Salvador. The image that springs to mind is the one of Himmler and attendant flunkies outside the wire of a prison in Minsk, being stared at by rag-clad victims he believed he was superior to. Noem has failed to learn the lessons of history.
Christopher Harrison

I can’t be the only one to read Matt d’Ancona’s articles on the current state of the USA as though I’m watching something horrific on TV through my fingers. A combination of not wanting or trying not to read, or at least in small bits, but reading nonetheless so as to help me understand. It’s truly terrifying.

My daughter is going to Chicago for a few days with a mate next month. I really wish she wasn’t.
Richard Debbonaire

Jay Elwes (“Why do they hate us so much”, TNE website) is absolutely right – the MAGAloons of the US hate Europe, and the EU in particular, with a passion.

There are many reasons for this: the EU is a bigger market in terms of population than the US. It produces better, more reliable products conforming to mutually agreed standards. The single market and customs union, while not yet complete or perfect, function far better than any deals the US has with countries within and beyond the Americas. 

The EU is a triumph of co-operation and trade between significantly different, sovereign nations. Other countries are queuing up to join, whereas Trump’s puerile attempts to go after Canada, Greenland and Panama cause their peoples to recoil in disgust. His tariffs will in the end only harm the American people.
Phil Green

So the Danish government has “seriously let down” the people of Greenland? Given how MAGA is letting down Americans, a bit rich coming from Trump’s “attack dog” JD (Jeopardy Dawg) Vance.
John Castell 
Suffolk

Trump, Vance and co are simply asset strippers. Ukrainian minerals, Greenland’s hidden treasures. What next? There’s gold in them there hills… South Africa? After all, they claim SA has been ripping off the US for decades.
Anne Green

Ring of truth
Re: Jonty Bloom’s “why can’t we be Switzerland?” (TNE #429). As he points out, Labour’s red lines prevent us from getting a Swiss-style deal with the EU.

It is much more likely that when the dust settles in Ukraine, the EU might at that time put together an “outer ring” proposal. Constructed sensibly it could address Ukraine, the UK, many of the Balkan states, and perhaps even in time Turkey, and would do so in a manner that would be a transferable template. 

The EU really doesn’t want a string of bespoke deals – it has enough problems managing Quisling-blockers like Viktor Orbàn who are already cuckoos in the nest. For Rejoiners in the UK it would be less than the European Economic Area, but at least a step in the right direction.
David Sharman

The deal between the EU and Switzerland is not without its critics in Bern – in fact the right wing (the main group that prevented a pro-EU vote back in 1992) will continue to oppose, as far as I can tell. This latest initiative has taken well over a decade, precisely because the EU has moved to reject a “pick and choose” approach to agreements with non-EU countries. It will also be subjected to a referendum, any outcome prediction for which will be very volatile. 

However, I do think the timing for a concerted approach by a UK government to start talking could hardly be better. At the same time, I don’t see Labour being able to exit from their current fug and take the initiative.
Brian Rees

The perils of forgetting
No sooner had I finished reading “We’re not ready for the next pandemic” by James Ball (TNE #429), I tuned into Radio 4 Extra to listen to a programme about Ian Dury, who was struck down by polio, aged seven, in 1949. Although many others suffered worse outcomes, he was in hospital for months and had a lifelong limp.

The generation who were adults before the mass rollout of vaccines in the 1950s are now largely gone. My parents would be nearly 100 if they were still with us; and I can still hear them speak of the devastation they witnessed caused by the above along with measles, diphtheria, and whooping cough. 

Even without new hazards, I fear a resurgence of old diseases and the resultant childhood deaths and mass disablement, caused by anti-vaxxers, collective memory loss and the dysfunctional Trump administration.
Robert Boston 
Kings Hill, Kent

A toxic system
Tim Bradford’s telling line-up of “Toxic male influencers” (What’s Going On?, TNE #429) provides a dismal glimpse of how little feminist values have managed to even modify white supremacist, hetero-normative societal dominance over the years. However, it would be a mistake to identify these hetero heroes as the main problem as individuals. 

Misogyny and racism are systems of oppression, exploitation and brutality that provide the cultural framing for boys’ and men’s behaviour. But no one is born a misogynist, homophobe or racist. We are trained by powerful vested interests, fuelled by their fear of difference and sexual fascination with femininity, and their propensity for cruelty and violence to secure and maintain dominance.

Children have a right to an upbringing and education that equips them to understand the social forces at work, to enable them to be both safe and able to break free. We must start by acknowledging the destructive force of white supremacist, hetero-normative masculinity and the men who live by it and promote it.
Val Walsh

Risky business 
Re: Critical Mass on the return of the “stranded” astronauts (TNE #429).

Sit a couple of humans in an experimental can (built by Boeing) on top of a tube containing 150,000 tons of methane/liquid oxygen and then set light to it, hopefully put them into an orbit, at what, 25,000 mph?

Return them in a can (built by Elon “move fast and break things” Musk) that reaches a couple of thousand degrees C during its fall.

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say “they were never at risk”.
Steve Buch

Life’s purpose
Nigel Warburton’s column on the meaning of life (TNE #429) was very timely, given the current debate on assisted dying. It has long been my view (I am close to my 90s) that when my life has ceased to have any purpose through irreversible mental and/or physical disability, it will be time to go.

I see absolutely no purpose in burdening good people, whether in my family or from wider society, physically, emotionally and financially, with maintaining my pointless existence. That is equally true whether medics reckon I am likely to die naturally within three months, six months or six years.
Richard H Burnett-Hall 
London W11

Could it be that the meaning of life is to find what the meaning of life is? Life has evolved to produce beings with brains advanced enough to understand how and why life has got as far as it has. It has done so because of physical laws and chemical and biological processes combined with random events over a long enough time for natural selection to push those most fit to survive.

In an increasingly chaotic and meaningless world, where life is extraordinarily unlikely yet amazingly complex and varied, there are vanishingly few people whose lives gain meaning by adding to the sum of human knowledge. Life is a temporary condition. Some personal satisfaction should be had from improving the lives of others. Our purpose should be to try to enjoy living it while we can.
Roland Lazarus 
Billericay, Essex

Syrian surprise
As a member of The British Society of Dowsers I was very surprised to see in TNE #427 an article about people in Syria digging for ancient artefacts and lost gold trinkets.

What caught my eye was the drawing that showed a Y-shaped dowsing rod. This brass-handled contraption, as it is referred to, is a tool of substantial means as when that responds to whatever is being searched for it will react with considerable force.

Dowsing is not just to find water, but anything that is lost. During the middle ages it was used in a court of law to find innocence or guilt.

Thank you for an excellent paper, often full of enlightening content and the odd surprise, such as this one.
Andrew Foreman 
Worcester Park, Surrey

BELOW THE LINE
Comments, conversation and correspondence from our online subscribers

Re: “The key to Russia lies in Beijing” by Paul Mason (TNE #429).

You cannot bargain Russia to a standstill, it must be defeated, period. Like Nazi Germany. Sorry to disappoint all those who believe we can negotiate with mass murderers.
Roxolanna Istriana

Sixty-three years ago, in our grammar school study of the geography of China, our geography master told us that China would rise to be a great power.

The wars of the past few years have advanced Chinese interests without it firing a bullet. China has Russia in its pocket, the US is so scared it is losing ground to the Chinese that it is imposing tariffs, Europe has stalled and Britain has returned to being the sick man of Europe. The withdrawal of USAID and Britain’s aid reduction has played into their hands, leaving them a vacuum to exploit. They are acquiring allies in the Pacific.

My geography teacher was right all those years ago. China is the rising power of the 21st century.
David Rolfe

Re: Josh Barrie on lasagne (TNE #429). We LOVE lasagne. But why no mention of the essential garlic bread accompaniment in any of these descriptions? I trust its presence is taken for granted, but the quality of the garlic bread can make or break the experience!
Tony Jones

Re: Dilettante on the pandemic (TNE #429). Everyone’s experience will have differed, and mine was notably different because I live in France. Seen from here by a (then) 60-year-old, living with my partner and our youngest daughter, in a house with a garden, it seemed almost miraculous. The weather was good, the garden was lovely, and I was being paid 80-something per cent of my salary to do nothing! 

I am fully aware that I was very lucky in many respects. But, again, seen from France, UK public policy appeared to be a total mess. It also looked very corrupt: I particularly objected to having to pay a bung to some recently-founded, Tory-supporting “testing company” to go and see my father in the UK, when the free test I got in France before going should have sufficed but…  Brexit! 

The final indignity being that the results of the self-test didn’t arrive until after I’d returned to France.
Thomas Landon

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