Letters: The Conservatives are more concerned with re-election than the success of the country

SIR – In his New Year speech (report, January 6), Sir Keir Starmer said that the Conservatives “believe a good government is one that gets out of the way”. If only.

The days are long gone when a Conservative government concentrated on the safety of the country and law-abiding people, and otherwise contented itself with creating the conditions for businesses and families to thrive. In contrast to the so-called Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Keir says that private wealth generation is crucial – but he is still clearly wedded to big government.

Pretty much everything governments have done in the last few decades has made life worse for the British people. Neither Sir Keir nor Rishi Sunak recognises the catastrophe unleashed by the draconian response to Covid. They fail to grasp that it is the state’s tentacles strangling our health and education systems, rendering both unfit for purpose.

After 13 years of Conservative government, not least the appalling Boris Johnson era, almost everything run by the state is broken, but the reason for this is that governments have become steadily more socialist and more interested in re-election than the sustainable success of our country.

Tim Coles
Carlton, Bedfordshire

SIR – Allister Heath (“Nobody wants to confront the truth: Britain is becoming a poor country”, Comment, January 5) reminds us that Rishi Sunak’s New Year speech did not contain any policies that would have an impact on growth this year. In particular, there was no reference to wealth-creating productivity, which stalled after 2008.

Central banks then manipulated interest rates and introduced quantitative easing. Abundant cheap money led to financialisaton and capital misallocation, compounded by environmental, social and corporate governance, and huge subsidies for intermittent energy projects.

Head boys are fine fellows – authoritative, intelligent and hardworking – but are only appointed by the beaks because they will toe the line. The former head boys of Winchester and Charterhouse are allegedly in control but actually they are only toeing the line of civil servants – today’s beaks.

We are cursed with austerity and outdated establishment orthodoxies. Hope dies here without immediate policy reversals to focus on productivity. It’s simple: we must expand low-cost energy output and reduce taxes on savings and companies. As the national savings rate grows, increased investment and rising productivity will automatically follow and our long-standing twin deficits will shrink. The only complexities here are for former head boys ensnared within the Blob.

Hugo D Page Croft
Beaumaris, Anglesey

Dentistry’s decline

SIR – Before 1990, NHS dentistry (Letters, January 1) had enthusiastic, hard-working dentists who could make a modest income providing the full range of treatment, including crowns, chrome dentures and bridges. They risked being thrown out of the NHS for costing government too much. The British Dental Association meekly accepted the disastrous 1990 contract with lower and lower fees to deter dentists.

Many later wrote to Tony Blair suggesting the removal of these items, to allow higher fees for basics, including acrylic dentures. Dentists who worked hard received diminishing fees from a fixed global sum, dictated by a review body limited by government diktat. Successive governments have essentially welcomed the departure of NHS dentists.

With Covid requiring air-con and less use of turbines and ultrasonic scalers, dentists redesigned their surgeries. They introduced computer systems, intraoral cameras, new smooth dental units and chairs, and hired highly qualified and motivated assistants – all requiring investment of up to £100,000. Many then chose to go private, catering only for the wealthy. Charges of £900 for a milled crown, £120 for a white filling and £600 for chrome dentures are common.

Steve Sanford
Welton, Lincolnshire

SIR – I was perplexed to ring my dentist last week and find that, as I had not been for three years, I was no longer on the books. I have not been for three years due to closures during the Covid pandemic, lack of availability after the pandemic and, more importantly, because I had no need to go. 

Seemingly, in order to stay registered, one must bother the overstretched dentists whether one needs to or not.

Anna Hare
Helmsley, North Yorkshire

Building back bulkier

SIR – I much appreciated Simon Heffer’s article about the hideousness of post-Second World War buildings, especially brutalist ones (“We need a Demolition Commission to sweep away our ugliest architecture”, Comment, January 1).

He mentioned the Derby Assembly Rooms, “which have been rotting since they were damaged by a fire in 2014 and demand to be put out of their misery to aid the city’s regeneration.”

Having just arrived in Derby as a tyro museum officer when this hideous building, designed by Sir Hugh Casson’s firm, was opened in 1977, I spent the following 40 years in lectures and town tours lamenting the loss of the lightly fire-damaged Grade II listed Georgian Assembly Rooms (built by 5th Earl Ferrers, Joseph Pickford and the Adam Brothers between 1763 and 1774) and condemning the present building for being grossly out of scale for our 12th-century Market Place, surrounded as it is by Georgian and early Victorian buildings, unworkable as a theatre and appallingly ugly to boot. It does, though, enjoy the relative merit of not being too tall.

Since the 2014 fire, many of us have changed our tune, for the restricted size of the site, and lamentable track record to date of successive Derby councils for overseeing regenerative projects that are in any way appropriate to what is still essentially a low-rise Georgian city, have forced us to realise that any redevelopment is likely to be much taller and bulkier, with absolutely no guarantee of any aesthetic improvement whatsoever.

Thus we have resolutely urged refurbishment (the damage is relatively light – for it was the adjacent multi-story car park which burnt – and current estimates for putting it back into commission are wildly over-egged) rather than redevelopment, for which no takers have yet emerged in any case.

If Mr Heffer is willing to serve on his Demolition Commission, I would certainly be pleased to join him. Meanwhile, it is always wise to be careful in what you wish for.

Max Craven
Vice President, Derby Civic Society
Derby

Farmers know that councils can’t plant trees

SIR – Farmers will not be surprised by the failure of planting schemes by public authorities (“Trees left to die in rushed council planting schemes”, report, January 1), and the public should appreciate how much they owe to farmers for doing the job properly and for watering and managing the trees for many years. This has largely been done free of charge by people who value their landscape and are prepared to work for it and pay for it.

My grandfather planted an avenue of lime trees for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and I have maintained it for 70 years. I planted an avenue of perry pear trees to celebrate the millennium. I also planted six English elm trees to replace Dutch elm losses. My grandson is keeping this up by planting both specimens and many hundreds of yards of native, locally sourced hedgerows.

I dread to think of the results when farmers are driven out of business and countryside management is left to public authorities and their computers.

Jeremy Chamberlayne
Gloucester

Upside-down Church

SIR – Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, claims the Church of England is “very committed” to supporting and revitalising the local church, and to sustaining clergy numbers (Comment, December 18). However, James Burnell-Nugent (Letters, December 31) notes that there are many dioceses in which up to 20 parishes are to be merged into single units.

No Church leader has acknowledged that the reason it is necessary to save money on parishes and priests could have anything to do with costly top-heavy management.

In 1959 the Church employed 13,075 stipendiary clergy and 250 diocesan support staff. There are now 6,500 support staff, most of whom are not ordained and have no contact with places where most Christian good is done, and are often on salaries well in excess of the stipends paid to parish priests. In addition, the Church now employs 116 bishops, despite the fact that when all England’s parishes had their own priest and a large congregation, 26 bishops were capable of looking after them.

This situation is truly upside-down.

Emma Brooksbank
Malton, North Yorkshire

Nuclear waste disposal

SIR – Rod Donington-Smith (Letters, January 1) is correct in highlighting the need for long-term disposal of higher-level radioactive waste.

Nuclear Waste Services is an integration of Britain’s nuclear waste management capabilities – Low Level Waste Repository, Radioactive Waste Management, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority group’s Integrated Waste Management Programme – and is developing a geological disposal facility for the permanent disposal of higher activity radioactive waste.

This is a step in the right direction, but must be sped up. It is one of the largest environmental protection and infrastructure programmes in Britain, but failure to expedite it will impact our civil nuclear programme.

Admiral Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
London SW1

SIR – Our quarterly electricity bill for autumn is usually about £100, which we have been happy to pay for years. Last year, with massive increases in wholesale prices and the Government’s subsidy, it was £9.38.

I thought Jeremy Corbyn lost the last election.

Michael Heaton
Warminster, Wiltshire

Frozen foodie

SIR – Our Schnauzer also leaves peas (Letters, January 2), licked forensically clean of any other food, in her bowl.

We have found that the secret to making her eat any vegetables is to provide them frozen, in which state she cannot get enough.

Stephen Knight
Barnet, Hertfordshire

SIR – Our terrier loves all the food I order from a dog food delivery service – except the whole peas in some packs.

Perhaps Mike Thomas (Letters, January 2) should do what I do and squash them. Strangely, they then all get eaten.

Sandy Hyams
King’s Lynn, Norfolk

SIR – Unlike Mike Thomas’s spaniel, one of ours would eat no vegetables other than peas.

However, the same dog, who as a puppy was fed kibble in three colours (brown, yellow and green), would refuse to eat the little green ones, which would be extracted and left neatly to one side of the bowl.

Mary Le Coyte
Dulverton, Somerset

SIR – I had a springer spaniel called Toad who steadfastly refused to eat sprouts. No matter how many days I left them in her food, each day I would collect her dish, licked clean, but with the sprouts still rattling around. They were the only things she ever refused.

Don Philp
Worcester

SIR – My old retired racehorse hated apples. My daughters would hide a small cube of apple in his feed bucket, topping off the feed with boiled linseed, which he adored. The apple cube was always left in the bottom of the well licked-out bucket.

Harriet Robinson
Chillerton, Isle of Wight

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