The P&O human methods system shows how harmful it is to treat seasoned personnel as expendable and to abandon human values even in a economic crisis (“No sea experience desired, says agency ad for P&O crews”, Information). As an Isle of Wight resident, through lockdown when our cross-Solent transport expert services have been less than severe monetary pressure, I observed the price of collaborative ethical management to hold us related to the mainland and guarantee all passengers, specially crucial employees, had obtain to their workplaces.
As a member of the Hover Journey User Group, I read how the firm achieved out to aid ambulance solutions to transport sufferers promptly to the mainland. The crew underwent rigorous teaching and numerous significantly unwell individuals have benefited. The group, drawn from commuters, wellness charities and assistance groups, educational institutions and island traders, is consulted about changes to observe. Its tips and ideas are taken very seriously and usually implemented. The firm knows it does not get it right all the time, but performs with clients to ease complications. These types of openness and company to the community be certain that we and the company survived turbulent instances. Most likely there is a lesson there for P&O.
Yvonne Williams
Ryde, Isle of Wight
Crime doesn’t fork out
Rana Mitter observes that Russia’s elites contemplate China nekulturny, or uncultured, possessing hardly ever created a Dostoevsky (“China-Russian relations have deep memories of mutual respect… and scorn”, Comment). China could possibly do effectively, in the spirit of “friendship devoid of limits”, to remind its new good friends that the writer of The Gambler and The Fool also wrote Crime and Punishment.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
Place persons before crops
Your write-up about cycling and strolling infrastructure ideas (“Get on your bicycle? Not if some Tory councils have their way…”, News) would make no mention of unwell considered-out techniques, released devoid of any equality affect evaluation. Exactly where I reside, planters (glorified packing conditions) and benches (who wishes to sit in the street?) have been applied to impede parking destinations, blocking men and women with impaired mobility from accessing stores and services.
Janet Mearns
London W3
In praise of tides
The sun doesn’t normally shine, the wind doesn’t constantly blow, but the tide reliably goes in and out each working day. Why was tidal electrical power not talked about in your piece on the selections we have as sources of energy? It now would seem incredibly shortsighted to have deserted the Severn Estuary scheme. No matter what the charge then, it would be very good benefit now.
Sue Humphries
York
Who are the actual hypocrites?
Nick Cohen’s scathing posting deriding those people he regards as Russian defenders/apologists/propagandists is most noteworthy for its condemnation of the ethical hypocrisy afflicting men and women who “excoriate the double requirements of democracies though excusing or ignoring the crimes of dictatorships” (“Collaboration thrives on everyday vainness and ambition. Just search at RT’s wannabes”, Comment). This offers only one particular component of a circular discussion. To lots of, those people who unflinchingly condemn the steps of the Russian state even though ignoring the loss of life, destruction and displacement wreaked by unlawful, western-led invasions or sustained illegal occupations perpetrated by their allies epitomise anything that Cohen decries.
Nick Cusack
Paisley, Renfrewshire
The privatisation dilemma
I have worked in or together with children’s social treatment for a lot of a long time and bear in mind when privatisation was 1st promoted (“Revealed: best 10 children’s care suppliers made £300m profits”, Information). Fairly like academies and absolutely free universities, the rhetoric was handing in excess of handle, regardless of whether to skilled childcare personnel, parents or teachers rescuing expert services from bureaucratic regulate. Little by little, non-public fairness has taken around and value-cutting began to maximise income. Just one such transfer was to offer the homes in the city locations where by the small children had grown up and exchange them with more cost-effective choices, usually disused farmhouses and distant cottages, regularly detached from communities. Nearby authorities positioning vulnerable little ones have to take what is on present.
When a child requirements a placement is when there should really be a acceptable emptiness but, to maximise financial gain, amenities require to be entire most of the time. This is wherever the issue occurs, which only financial financial investment can solve profit indicates restricting vacancies, although decision and availability need carrying vacancies in the program. Insert the reality that the millions of kilos of profit heading to shareholders is all taxpayers’ income, supplied to care for vulnerable children, and we have a clear instance of why we must not be privatising public services.
Roy Grimwood
Marketplace Drayton, Shropshire
Chagossian courage
Though agreeing with the general argument in Kenan Malik’s insightful posting (“As the imperial ties are currently being solid apart, a royal tour was always likely to be a farce”, Comment), his reference to the Chagos Islanders was misleading. In actuality, the extension of citizenship to descendants of people shamefully evicted from the Chagos Islands is the final result of successful campaigning by Chagossians themselves.
Their campaign resulted in a Lords modification to the appalling nationality and borders bill that was handed by a lot more than 80 votes, with strong assistance from all benches which include the Conservatives. This, collectively with the help in the Commons of Henry Smith MP, led to the governing administration concession. The campaigns for the Chagossians’ ideal to return to their homeland and for citizenship are not and ought to not be mutually distinctive.
Baroness (Ruth) Lister of Burtersett
Residence of Lords
London SW1
The cost of Brexit
Many thanks to Will Hutton for drawing focus to the catastrophic economic influence of Brexit with the words “the reign of silence on Brexit – and that incorporates you, Labour get together – indicates the destruction goes unnoticed and uncriticised” (“For brazen cynicism, I have found very little like Sunak’s system in 40 years”, Comment). Elsewhere in the paper, experiences these kinds of as 400 men and women a week leaving the NHS and the considerable erosion of teachers’ salaries spotlight the stress on public funds and the need to discover each attainable option for elevating the required tax revenues. In this context, any rational government or future government should surely re-analyze the self-imposed Brexit, an situation that is forecast to have a internet expense to general public funds of £30bn a yr, or, to place it one more way, all over £570m a 7 days a lot less to commit on the NHS.
The will need for a re-examination is bolstered by the polls indicating that men and women are progressively beginning to realise the charge of Brexit, with a few to a person now taking into consideration it undesirable for the financial state.
David Newens
Great Linford, Milton Keynes
Buckinghamshire
Part products with strings
As a massive supporter of Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, I was sad to study of Gerry Anderson’s complicated childhood (“Why Mother’s Working day was no trigger to rejoice for creator of Thunderbirds”, News). Having said that, as I had a relatively overprotective mum and a father who legged it soon following I was conceived, the Tracy household, along with Colonel White, Lieutenant Inexperienced and the indestructible Captain himself gave me a obvious notion of what it is to be a man, albeit a small, plastic a person with strings connected.
Ian Grieve
Gordon Bennett, Llangollen canal