Churches work in harmony in rural communities | Letters

January 13, 2018, 4:05 pm

≫ Next: Letter: Peter Preston and the Journalist Network

≪ Previous: Censorship wins no arguments and just helps the right | Nick Cohen

The Church of England and the nonconformist churches have long been in a fruitful partnership

There is no doubt about the enormous contribution being made by clergy from the established church in responding to the challenges of poverty, isolation and cuts to public services in rural areas (“How rural vicars became the last social workers in the countryside”, News.

However, it was disappointing that the article failed to mention the significant contribution being made, often in partnership with the C of E, by the nonconformist churches, in particular the Methodist church.

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Letter: Peter Preston and the Journalist Network

January 14, 2018, 6:10 am

≫ Next: Stoke is on the up since Labour lost control of the city council | Letters

≪ Previous: Churches work in harmony in rural communities | Letters

Peter Preston was always something of a hero as editor of my beloved Guardian. Thus I was very pleased to meet him for the first time in 2002, when he joined the advisory board of the Journalist Network, an organisation launched by Community Service Volunteers (CSV, now Volunteering Matters).

The JN was a voluntary body linking retired journalists and broadcasters with charities, especially small and underfunded ones, to provide media advice and practical help. Peter wrote an excellent piece about the fledgling organisation in the Guardian, which prompted numerous media veterans to offer their services, and generally enhanced the status of the network.

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Stoke is on the up since Labour lost control of the city council | Letters

January 14, 2018, 9:45 am

≫ Next: Mary Shelley wasn’t a one-hit wonder | Letters

≪ Previous: Letter: Peter Preston and the Journalist Network

After dominating local politics for most of the past 50 years, Labour were thrown out of power on the city council in 2015, writes Stoke South’s first Tory MP in 80 years

In your online documentaries and article on Stoke-on-Trent (G2, 10 January), you pointed out the tremendous turnaround in our city’s ambition over the past few years. While we did not win our City of Culture bid, there is a palpable sense that the city is “on the up”. You did not mention, however, the catalyst for this change: after dominating local politics for most of the past 50 years, Labour were thrown out of power on the city council by a coalition of Conservatives and independents in 2015. The people of Stoke-on-Trent South have seen what a positive impact this has had, and consequently last year voted for me to be their MP – the first Conservative to represent the area in parliament for more than 80 years. As we leave the EU, I look forward to seeing a further growth in confidence here.
Jack Brereton MP
Conservative, Stoke-on-Trent South

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Mary Shelley wasn’t a one-hit wonder | Letters

January 14, 2018, 9:46 am

≫ Next: Yes, Trump offends, but what did we expect? | Letters

≪ Previous: Stoke is on the up since Labour lost control of the city council | Letters

Barbara Jane O’Sullivan on the Frankenstein author’s other literary output, and John Green on confusion caused by having authors of the same name

Fiona Sampson (The creation myth, Review, 13 January) provides an overview of possible sources for the central theme of Frankenstein, but fails to mention a significant one: Prometheus. It is no coincidence that Percy Shelley grasped this myth in Prometheus Unbound, and that Mary critiqued it in Frankenstein and subsequent work. As she commented to Byron’s mistress after his death: “We are all Cassandras; and we are so blind that we do not give heed to the silent voice which makes itself heard within our soul.”

While exploring the story of the production of Frankenstein, Sampson also inadvertently encourages the myth that Mary was a one-great-book wonder, lumping her impressive lifetime’s achievement under the category “dogged survivor and consummate professional”. Valperga (1823) was already in train when Frankenstein was published. The Last Man (1826) is set in a future in which a plague has killed off all but one human on the planet. In addition Mary wrote three further novels, dozens of short stories, biographical sketches, and, of course, prepared her late husband’s collected works for publication. An impressive literary legacy for which Frankenstein is only the first chapter.
Rev Barbara Jane O’Sullivan
Portsmouth

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Yes, Trump offends, but what did we expect? | Letters

January 14, 2018, 9:46 am

≫ Next: Surgeon who signed livers is punished but managers let off | Letters

≪ Previous: Mary Shelley wasn’t a one-hit wonder | Letters

Ted Schrecker suggests the UN should move its headquarters out of the US, Munjed Farid Al Qutob says Trump is delivering what he promised, and Scott Poynting says the president should look to ‘shitholes’ closer to home

Now that President Trump, in his “shithole” comments (Report, 13 January), has once again demonstrated his contempt for a substantial part of the world’s population, and the United Nations has rebuked him, it is surely time for the UN to go further and consider relocating its headquarters to a more civilised part of the world. Copenhagen, Montréal and Nairobi are among the locations that immediately suggest themselves. One hopes that informal discussions along these lines have already begun.
Ted Schrecker
Professor of global health policy, Newcastle University

• Trump is so far the most straightforward and candid president the US has ever had. Didn’t he utter vulgar, racist and vile statements during his presidential campaign; sometimes linking the whole religion of Islam to terrorism, violence and sexual harassment; sometimes pledging to build a wall to deter Mexican migrants from entering the US, describing them as rapists, murderers and drug dealers; sometimes promising to recognise Jerusalem, a city sacred for followers of the three Abrahamic faiths, as the capital of Israel, compromising America’s stance as an honest broker in the Middle East; sometimes pledging to humiliate the House of Saud and milk their coffers? Didn’t he promise to withdraw the US from the Paris treaty on global warming? He acted on all his verbal campaign’s promises. We shouldn’t be surprised at the vulgarity of President Trump. Instead, we should blame those who raised him to the highest echelon of power.
Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London

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Surgeon who signed livers is punished but managers let off | Letters

January 14, 2018, 9:46 am

≫ Next: Readers hope that the tabloid Guardian will catch alight | Brief letters

≪ Previous: Yes, Trump offends, but what did we expect? | Letters

John Carlisle compares Simon Bramhall’s act to a footballer taking off his shirt after scoring a goal, and Dr RC Horton says an individual surgeon has been punished whereas an institution would have got off scot-free

I am an altruistic kidney donor and am appalled at the treatment of Simon Bramhall, the surgeon who initialled two livers in transplant operations (Surgeon fined £10,000 for signing his initials on livers of two transplant patients, 12 January).

I am particularly incensed at the comments of the judge and the whingeing of Patient A. For the judge to call it “an abuse of power and betrayal of trust” borders on the ludicrous.

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Readers hope that the tabloid Guardian will catch alight | Brief letters

January 14, 2018, 9:46 am

≫ Next: Our Open University has become a daydream | Letters

≪ Previous: Surgeon who signed livers is punished but managers let off | Letters

Readers on the hopes (and fears) for the new format newspaper

Monday 15 January is also the day of my 64th birthday. I’m waiting, with some trepidation, to see if I love my gift from you as much as I have loved my familiar friend, the Berliner, and its predecessor, all my adult life.
Annie Grist
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

• There will be understandable excitement at Guardian HQ over the change to tabloid. The outsourcing of printing may go unremarked. I hope a way can be found to recognise and thank the many people who have produced the paper at print centres in London and Manchester.
John Dickinson
London

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Our Open University has become a daydream | Letters

January 14, 2018, 9:48 am

≫ Next: The middle-aged men of the press must keep pace with seismic social change, or be left behind | Hugh Muir

≪ Previous: Readers hope that the tabloid Guardian will catch alight | Brief letters

Former tutors Paula James and Anna Ford, and reader Mary Reddaway, fear for the future of the OU under its current vice-chancellor

Peter Horrocks may have fallen foul of the BBC hierarchy at one point (A visionary to save the Open University – or the man who will run it down?, 9 January), but for the OU he is just the latest in a line of vice-chancellors peddling the neoliberal agenda for higher education. He has threatened to cut a quarter of the curriculum and the workforce in student support. Horrocks is seriously compromising the future of the OU as a distance-learning provider of excellent degree programmes.

Critical thinking and critical speaking are indeed being stifled in the faculties. For some years now the vice-chancellor’s executive has implemented disastrous strategies (centralisation, closure of regional centres, putting so much online in administration and teaching, and drastically reducing tutorial support for students). We are now confronted with a remote, blinkered and yet highly paid senior management which fails to consult or listen to those who actually know something about the OU students and their educational needs.

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The middle-aged men of the press must keep pace with seismic social change, or be left behind | Hugh Muir

January 14, 2018, 6:00 am

≫ Next: Nigel Farage speaks from the rubbish dump – cartoon

≪ Previous: Our Open University has become a daydream | Letters

Defensive, self-interested reporting of equality campaigns will leave national newspapers looking behind the curve

Hear that rumble; feel that tremor. It’s tectonic plates shifting. 2017 was a year of aggressive activism. 2018 will be even more so.

Equality and social justice campaigns have noticeably gone up a gear: think #MeToo, gender, race, mental health, disability. Finally, after years denying there was a problem or defending the status quo, authorities in government and other areas of public life appear to be listening. So how will a British media famously sluggish about addressing demands for social change, much less for change and diversity within the industry itself, cope? The omens aren’t uniformly good.

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Nigel Farage speaks from the rubbish dump – cartoon

January 13, 2018, 4:05 pm

≫ Next: The Guardian view on contemporary art in schools: a joyful idea reborn | Editorial

≪ Previous: The middle-aged men of the press must keep pace with seismic social change, or be left behind | Hugh Muir

Chris Riddell on calls for a second referendum and Theresa May’s new green agenda

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The Guardian view on contemporary art in schools: a joyful idea reborn | Editorial

January 14, 2018, 5:42 am

≫ Next: The Guardian view on UK defence strategy: Britain’s priorities must be European | Editorial

≪ Previous: Nigel Farage speaks from the rubbish dump – cartoon

In the 1940s, School Prints were a visionary notion to bring affordable, adventurous artworks into classrooms. Reinvented for the 21st century, they still are today

In 1946, a letter was sent out to a number of British artists. It began: “We are producing a series of auto-lithographs … for use in schools, as a means of giving school children an understanding of contemporary art. By keeping the price as low as possible, we are able to bring this scheme … within reach of all Education Authorities.” This was the beginning of a project called School Prints. The idea had been that of a dashing Etonian (and European federalist) called Derek Rawnsley, who died in 1943 while in the RAF. It was carried through by his young widow, Brenda– an equally dashing figure who, fluent in Arabic and French, had served during the war as an intelligence officer in Algiers, Cairo and Palestine, and undertook missions such as a clandestine visit to a bombmaking factory in Germany.

Not knowing a great deal about art, she co-opted someone who did: the critic Herbert Read. Between them they persuaded artists including John Nash, Tom Gentleman and Barbara Jones to contribute to the project. Schools enthusiastically embraced their gentle, playful images, which included a harvest scene, dray horses and a fairground. In 1947, having already persuaded Henry Moore to make an abstract work for her, she broadened the series to French artists and – by dint of hiring an aircraft and employing her considerable charm – convinced Dufy, Picasso, Léger, Matisse and Braque to take part. Though less popular with postwar British schoolteachers, the French set is the one that has best stood the test of time.

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The Guardian view on UK defence strategy: Britain’s priorities must be European | Editorial

January 14, 2018, 9:44 am

≫ Next: Desperate for a trade deal, the Tories are enabling Donald Trump | Matthew d’Ancona

≪ Previous: The Guardian view on contemporary art in schools: a joyful idea reborn | Editorial

Brexit or no Brexit, the UK and France must use this week’s summit to work more closely together on military and security issues

Whether Brexit happens or whether it does not, one thing will not change. Britain will need a defence strategy for the future that better reflects its real place in the world. Geographically, Britain’s place is going nowhere, Brexit or no Brexit. Geopolitically, the world is changing. As China’s power rises, the US turns isolationist under a dangerous president, terrorist and cyber-threats continue and nuclear arms proliferate. Britain’s defence strategy needs to adapt and keep pace.

Prime ministers and defence secretaries still talk as if Britain is a global power with post-imperial reach, able to deploy a sweeping range of armed forces and weaponry in support of allies, principally the United States, from the Irish Sea to the Pacific. Most of Britain’s wars and deployments since 1945 have been made on that basis, with some exceptions like the missions in Northern Ireland and the Balkans. But this is not sustainable on the scale of the past, either politically or financially.

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Desperate for a trade deal, the Tories are enabling Donald Trump | Matthew d’Ancona

January 14, 2018, 11:25 am

≫ Next: Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires | Bernie Sanders

≪ Previous: The Guardian view on UK defence strategy: Britain’s priorities must be European | Editorial

Despite the US president’s appalling behaviour and rejection by the British people, the UK government continues to abase itself before the White House

“The president fundamentally wants to be liked,” says Katie Walsh, former White House deputy chief of staff, in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury. “He just fundamentally needs to be liked so badly that it’s always …everything is a struggle for him.”

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Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires | Bernie Sanders

January 14, 2018, 11:33 am

≫ Next: How to identify the pompous popinjay | Brief letters

≪ Previous: Desperate for a trade deal, the Tories are enabling Donald Trump | Matthew d’Ancona

If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

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How to identify the pompous popinjay | Brief letters

January 15, 2018, 10:42 am

≫ Next: The growing case for Kurdish statehood | Letters

≪ Previous: Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires | Bernie Sanders

Lord Harries (Letters, 13 January) criticises Tim Farron for failing to acknowledge the multiplicity of views within the Christian community but falls into the same trap himself. He should not have said that “Roman Catholic Christians …believe that all abortions are sinful”, but that “the Catholic church teaches” this.
Isabel Carrick
Hull

• John Crace (Digested week, 13 January) could have been writing about how I feel about January: low, anxious, lethargic, restless, dependent on the kindness of friends and family, and yoga. Today the first snowdrops in my garden cheered me up, as always.
Sharman Finlay
Portrush, County Antrim

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The growing case for Kurdish statehood | Letters

January 15, 2018, 10:42 am

≫ Next: Readers’ first impressions of the tabloid Guardian | Letters

≪ Previous: How to identify the pompous popinjay | Brief letters

Baghdad has closed Kurdistan’s airports to international flights, a ban that has just been extended despite its impact on commerce and medical treatment for all Kurds, writes Jack Lopresti MP

Your report (UK ‘inadvertently helped neuter’ its Iraqi Kurdish allies, 8 January) is a timely reminder that our vital Kurdish allies start the new year with the same old blockade-and-punish mentality in Baghdad, encouraged and assisted by the Iranian regime for its own malevolent purposes. Newspapers that once hailed the contribution of the Kurds to defeating Daesh (Isis) largely ignore the fact, for instance, that Baghdad has closed Kurdistan’s airports to international flights, a ban that has just been extended despite its obvious impact on commerce and medical treatment for all Kurdish people. I observed their independence referendum last year with an open mind but Baghdad is doing much to convince me and others that it spurns a federal Iraq of equals, and that eventual statehood may best suit both Kurds and Iraq.
Jack Lopresti MP (Conservative)
Chairman, APPG on the Kurdistan Region in Iraq

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

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Readers’ first impressions of the tabloid Guardian | Letters

January 15, 2018, 10:42 am

≫ Next: Carillion’s collapse exposes failings in tendering system | Letters

≪ Previous: The growing case for Kurdish statehood | Letters

Responses to the newly redesigned Guardian, which reduced from Berliner to tabloid size on Monday

I greeted Monday’s tabloid version with some trepidation, which only increased when on page 3, no less, there was a picture of four women in a row with bare legs on display and in one case quite a lot of cleavage. I was relieved, however, to find the rest of my beloved Guardian unchanged once I had found it all, helped by Katharine Viner’s comforting guide.
Lindsay Buckell
Beeston, Nottinghamshire

• Love the letters double spread with generous central focus on reader’s photo. The eyes take in the different topics so much more easily from left to right, segueing finally and serendipitously to the Country Diary. Bonne idée!
Maria Cox
Beeston, Nottinghamshire

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Carillion’s collapse exposes failings in tendering system | Letters

January 15, 2018, 10:43 am

≫ Next: Desperate measures in an underfunded NHS | Letters

≪ Previous: Readers’ first impressions of the tabloid Guardian | Letters

Charlie Wigglesworth sayswe need to embrace alternatives to the dominant PLCs such as social enterprises, while John Harvey says a review of the public sector procurement process is long overdue

Yet again we see a company that is “too big to fail” toppling over, leaving the taxpayer to pick up the tab, those lucky enough to hold a decent pension take a hit, and service users let down (Carillion talks fail to provide rescue plan, 15 January). It will take forensic accountancy to uncover the full story of what has happened, but we are likely to see a familiar pattern: a failure of corporate governance, overambitious and insufficiently cautious senior executives, shareholder pressure for short-term profit maximisation, contracts awarded on cheapest cost, and horrendously complicated PFI projects. Government and liquidators now face the unenviable and expensive task of sorting this mess out.

We cannot undo the past but we can avoid similar mistakes from happening in the future. The Competitions and Markets Authority should encourage diversity of company form and foster greater competition in public markets to avoid the dominance of a few large PLCs. We need to embrace alternative delivery models – employee-owned businesses and social enterprises that are not focused on short-term shareholder gain and can deliver solutions beyond the traditional state v private sector dichotomy.

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Desperate measures in an underfunded NHS | Letters

January 15, 2018, 10:44 am

≫ Next: John Humphrys’ attitude to equal pay highlights the BBC’s impartiality problem | Suzanne Moore

≪ Previous: Carillion’s collapse exposes failings in tendering system | Letters

Readers air their views on the crisis in the health service, as medical students are urged to volunteer to plug gaps

Hardware in the NHS has been allowed to decline dangerously, but equally damning and dangerous is the demoralisation of doctors in particular, a process that began 20 years ago with a deliberate desire to bring the profession to heal after the made-up scandal surrounding circumstances at Bristol. The General Medical Council, in league with politicians, promoted a consumer model of healthcare and industrialised the delivery of care-setting standards and targets to foster popular support and putting non-evidence-based burdens on doctors from which many have recoiled by dropping out or retiring early. Basically the job is less enjoyable.

There may be more doctors – I cannot verify this – but I suggest they are working fewer hours or less often. The number of unfilled consultant posts throughout the country can be verified and shows a shortage of the relevant expertise. Pleading for medical students to plug the gap is undignified desperation (Students drafted in to plug NHS gaps, 15 January).

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John Humphrys’ attitude to equal pay highlights the BBC’s impartiality problem | Suzanne Moore

January 15, 2018, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Martin Rowson on Carillion and the Conservatives – cartoon

≪ Previous: Desperate measures in an underfunded NHS | Letters

Our culture is finally changing with respect to subjects such as sexual abuse and the pay gap, yet these topics are still debated vigorously by the veteran broadcaster and his colleagues

Of the many things I have learned life is too short for – making your own puff pastry, monogamy, trying to have a proper drink in the interval at the theatre – top of my list is getting in a mobile-broadcast van outside my house in my nightie to be hooked up to the Today programme studio, in order to argue with various men. Second, perhaps, is listening to Today. If you have sat in a similar van or in the studio – headphones on while John Humphrys barks at you about abortion, something you have experienced and he has not, or John Pilger infers that anyone who does not think Julian Assange is a freedom fighter is in the pay of the CIA – you may feel the same way.

Surely no one was surprised by the audio that leaked last week, revealing Humphrys’ fossilised attitude to the concept of equal pay. The programme has long been an old boys’ club, absolutely Westminster- and London-centric, and it ventures into many areas – science, culture, the internet, the north and, er, women – with a supercilious attitude.

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