Letters: A tax on Drax would be a true Tory cause
Richard Drax’s assertion that “no one can be held responsible today for what happened many hundreds of years ago” might sound a little less disingenuous if he wasn’t personally profiting to such a vast extent from the appalling actions of his own ancestors (“Wealthy MP urged to pay up for his family’s slave trade past”, News). If he espouses the same cause that so many Tories champion, that it does people good to learn to stand on “their own two feet”, he would surely welcome the introduction of wealth and land taxes.
Brian Woolland
Salisbury, Wiltshire
Richard Drax cannot be responsible for what his ancestors did 400 years ago. But he is responsible for what he does now. Since his wealth is based on murder, kidnap and theft, the least he can do is return his plantation in Barbados to its rightful owners, the people who live there now. Thus the descendants of a much wronged people can benefit from a new hospital, a well-equipped school or some well-planned housing. He is a privileged person to have this in his gift.
Angela Singer
Cambridge
It is perhaps to be expected, but nevertheless disappointing, that after generations of his family enjoying so much more than their fair share of the fruits of nature and the labour of others, including slaves, Richard Drax seems unable to rise above himself and take some responsibility, as a few more honourable others have done, for the cost to his fellow humans, past and present, of his inherited property, accumulated wealth and self-serving politics. Come on, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, pay up, pay up and redeem your name!
Duncan Toms
Machynlleth, Powys
The trouble with Eton
Catherine Bennett was right to question “the special Eton magic” (“Just what is the special Eton magic that allows it to turn out epic oafs year after year?”, Comment). Apart from the lamentable examples of ministers of state, headed by a prime minister, we also have a civil service that hasn’t the faintest idea how to manage multimillion-pound deals with suppliers of goods and services.
Why did this happen? The answer is that civil servants and ministers had no education to prepare them for the world of negotiating and managing commercial contracts. IT and other providers signed up to contracts they knew were drawn up by employees who had no experience or ability to think through the detail. The latest examples of this can be seen in the confusing and expensive mess of managing Covid-19.
The tragedy is that this situation won’t change until Eton and other schools start preparing their students for a very different modern world.
Tim Lewindon
Felixstowe, Suffolk
Nurses deserve better
In the face of concern from across the NHS regarding the shortage of nurses and the increased demand resulting from Covid-19, the response of the Department of Health and Social Care is lamentable (“Nurses’ leader: we don’t have enough staff to keep all our patients safe”, News). To restate its commitment to recruit 50,000 nurses by the end of the current parliament not only fails to respond to the immediate shortages but also takes no account of the fact that the target was set before the onset of the pandemic. The department needs to respond to the very real concerns of beleaguered NHS professionals.
Neil Macehiter
Great Shelford, Cambridge
Another side of Enoch Powell
Nick Cohen is correct about the wholly negative effect that Enoch Powell’s views on race and the EU have continued to exert on the UK (“How did Enoch Powell, a man with no shame, come to haunt our times?”, Comment). However, Cohen ignores a major Powell speech that has had a long-lasting, permanent and wholly benevolent impact.
In 1961, when minister of health, he spoke of setting a “torch to the funeral pyre” of the long-stay mental illness asylums, which he pictured as “isolated, majestic and imperious”. This was so new and startling that even Powell called it “a colossal undertaking”, while recognising that his ideas required care in the community (a phrase he did not use). Within three weeks, his ministerial circular envisaged a variety of services for mentally ill people.
Powell’s was a constructive and humane challenge to the entrenched attitudes of psychiatric and nursing professionals. He should not be denied credit for setting in train one of the great social policy changes of the 20th century.
Terry Philpot
Limpsfield Chart, Surrey
Down with parasites
Will Hutton’s assertion that we are “a country to be plundered by old and new rentiers alike” (“As Airbnb’s shares go through the roof, we need to challenge the Big Tech monopoly”, Comment) is amply demonstrated in the tourism sector, not just by Airbnb but by another parasitic behemoth, Tripadvisor, which contributes nothing to the industry but can still rake off up to 20% of an accommodation booking’s value in its fee.
The irony appears to be lost on everyone – including VisitScotland, which has now “partnered” with it – in that the only benefit that Tripadvisor claims it gives to the customer for its booking service is that their money is safer with it than with the, presumably wholly untrustworthy, primary provider that it feeds off.
Allan Doyle
Greenhead, Dumfries
Take that, carrot fly
James Tapper’s insightful contribution (“New Generation of Good Lifers who set out to grow their own Christmas,” News) includes a tip for self-sufficiency from the renowned expert William Sutherland, who advises the novice grower against planting carrots.
I have enjoyed a bountiful carrot harvest, having duped carrot fly by planting seeds in lavatory roll holders. Cut in half, fill with potting compost, insert one seed in the centre, lightly cover and keep moist.
After germination, transplant carefully, keeping the cardboard capsule intact, to a deep ridge or large straight-sided pot. The capsule will disintegrate organically, providing a scent barrier to carrots on the move; chives planted in the same bed are also deterrents.
Anne Marie Kennedy
Co Galway, Ireland
