Letters: It’s not so easy to boycott Chinese goods

Jobs for all

Sir: Charles Bazlington championed Universal Basic Income in last week’s magazine (Letters, 9 May). It is welcome to see innovative ideas being discussed at a time of unprecedented economic crisis.

Might I suggest that if we wish to empower citizens, not just pay them, we instead look to provide employment via a National Job Guarantee? A guaranteed job at the living wage backed by the state and administered by national and local government as well as the charity and private sectors. This crisis has proved that people need not only money but purpose, camaraderie with colleagues, and the pride of a ‘job done well’; they want to provide for their families and contribute to society. We have plenty of work that needs doing.

If the Tories want to secure their new coalition of voters, and ‘grow’ us out of this economic hole, let’s hope that Dominic Cummings managed to recruit some of the ‘Unusual Economists’ he was seeking recently. We need individuals with the creativity and imagination to look beyond the textbook answers of the Treasury that have left too many people idle on benefits for too many years.
Matt Beresford
Feltham, Middlesex

Day of deaths

Sir: Until I read Nigel Farndale’s excellent article about obituaries, I thought I was the only person in the world who couldn’t stand what he describes as the unlovely euphemism of ‘passed away’ (‘Dying art’, 9 May). It suggests that our fear of death can be assuaged by pretending that nothing more significant has occurred than that the loved one has simply ceased to be here. And on the not uncommon event of two big names dying on the same day, I am reminded of 22 November 1963, when JFK, C.S.