Money down the Tube
Sir: Andrew Gilligan’s assessment (‘Chucking millions down the Tube’, 19 September) that for much of the public sector ‘the spending of money has become an end in itself’ is a timely one. Increased investment in public services is both the No. 1 thing Gordon Brown believes he can offer the country and the No. 1 thing he claims to have achieved. As Sir Humphrey put it in Yes, Minister, the Treasury does not work out what it needs and then think how to raise the money. It pitches for as much as it can get away with and then thinks how to spend it. Politicians selling themselves in elections need a way to quantify unquantifiable things, like how good our schools are, or how well our hospitals work, and billion-pound figures sound impressive. Civil servants keen to have bigger budgets to play with are only too happy to indulge their ministers. In the boom-time it was just about possible to get away with such profligacy. But with the nation in recession and in debt, we need not just cuts, but a profound change in our political culture. Simply raising the budgets of failing public services must stop being seen by politicians as the only way of improving them.
J. Mathieson
London W4
Sir: Andrew Gilligan may well mock TfL for spending £97 million on providing wheelchair users access to platforms (but not trains) at Green Park. But there is no reason why attention should not be given to other areas where a real difference can be made to the disabled. One of the best ways of viewing London is from the top of a double decker bus, but passengers in wheelchairs are excluded from this pleasure. It is time that lifts were installed in all buses to bring an end to this discrimination. Many years ago I was able to run to a stop to catch an approaching bus; now a brisk walk is all I can manage. Buses should have their speed limited to 10 mph so that those who are (relatively) disabled have equality of opportunity to catch the bus of their choice.
Laurence Kelvin
London W9
Sir: Andrew Gilligan reveals the astonishing disparity in numbers of high-salaried staff at Transport for London compared with the Treasury. It might be even more damning if he disclosed the number of lower-paid staff in each organisation.
John Page
Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
Debt to fixers
Sir: Well done, Sam Kiley (‘A tribute to war zone fixers’, 19 September), for a long overdue tribute to the fixers, the media’s unsung heroes. Like the combat cameramen we work with, we are nothing without them. The war reporter takes the risks and gets the glory. Those by his side are seldom equally rewarded. They get a mention only when they are killed. I have reported wars for over 40 years and I know for sure just how many I managed to survive because I was in the care of my fixer. Thank you again, Sam.
Michael Nicholson
(Former ITN foreign correspondent)
Grayswood, Surrey
Just Jerusalem, no jam
Sir: Reading Andrew Gimson’s excellent article on David Cameron’s Anglicanism (‘David Cameron’s Anglicanism’, 19 September) I was reminded of a delicious remark made by my old history master. ‘Anglicanism a religion! My dear boy, the Church of England is perhaps better described as a branch of the Women’s Institute to which men may be admitted.’
David Horsley
Moldgreen, West Yorkshire
Picking dads
Sir: I found Rod Liddle’s latest offering (‘Stick to buying perfume and forget about kids, Sir Elton’, 19 September) rather sad. As I read I couldn’t help asking myself, were I little Lev, would I rather be looked after by Sir Elton’n’ David Furnish or by Rod Liddle? It was a tricky one and I thought there might be some black moods in either household, but in the end the matter of the inheritance swung it.
Saffron Michaels
Suffolk
Mayor Bloomberg’s mistake
Sir: Boris Johnson (Diary, 19 September) seems to envy the ‘Olympian authority’ of New York’s mayor. It is Mr Bloomberg’s autocratic rule, especially his fanatical anti-smoking stance, that has made me vow never to visit the Big Apple again. If Mr Johnson wishes to attract more tourists to London, he should look elsewhere for a role model.
Andrew Hughes
Durham
The wrong question
Sir: I was surprised to read Dear Mary (Your problems solved, 19 September) endorsing the question ‘Where were you born?’ as a suitable ice-breaker for politicians. May I assure her that in gatherings which include people who aren’t white, such a question could be considered offensive and greeted with incredulity. In an age of hyper-sensitive multiculturalism, only the BNP would wish to imply that brown-skinned people are necessarily foreign.
Adrian Hilton
Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire
The bra’s a star
Sir: My breasts are entirely behind Stephen Bayley (‘Thanks for the breasts, Germaine!’, 19 September) and are happy to pledge support for their support. The garment in question that so offends Germaine Greer, the bra, doesn’t objectify my attributes in the slightest, nor does it distort reality. Bayley rightly draws to our attention Greer’s book of beautiful boys, with its aim to win back a woman’s right to enjoy ‘pre-adult boys with hairless chests, wide-apart legs and slim waists’. Bayley has been criticised for producing ‘filth for perverts’; Greer for what some called paedophilia.
Are the many sensitive and thought-provoking issues that Bayley raises about women, art and culture to be lost in the uproar? Shame on us. Don’t let them loose, ladies: loosen up.
Rose Rea
London SW1
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