Letter of the week: Do voters care about local government?

We in Kent are prepared to suffer so that voters will see what they get if they vote Reform in future elections. To be honest, we don’t have any choice.
Patrick Reynolds

Ed Jennings’ description of the goings-on at Reform-led Kent County Council does not surprise me at all. Lincolnshire County Council, on which I served from 2001 to 2017, got a taste of the kind of “politics” meted out by Reform’s predecessor Ukip, when, with 19 councillors, it briefly became the largest opposition party back in 2013, only to split after barely two months and to disappear altogether some four years later.

This year, however, the grandchild of Ukip became the controlling group at County Hall with 44 out of 70 seats and has so far appeared to stay together. It is clear to me, as it was some 12 years ago, that the vote which led to a reshuffling of the seats was largely a protest against national government.

It was a confirmation to me too of how little most people seem to care about local government. Who can blame them when one considers how local government has been gradually emasculated by central governments of all colours for over a century? 
John Marriott 
North Hykeham, Lincs

Even the merely competent figures who enter public service – at whatever level – tend to begin from a basic principle of serving the greater good. Yet among Reform’s ranks, from Nigel Farage downward, I have struggled to find anyone whose priorities extend beyond the holy trinity of “me, myself and I”.

Governing is difficult, often thankless work; those who do it are, I suspect, cut from sturdier cloth than the rest of us. And yes, bureaucracy can be maddening, but it exists for good reason: checks, balances, and the prevention of precisely this sort of chaos.
Jean-Marc Le Feuvre

Re: Alastair Campbell’s Diary (TNW #460)

I have long thought that Labour’s plan was to get the unpopular stuff done in the first half of its term, then to roll out the popular stuff in the second half, and get re-elected. Banning Palestine Action was a silly mistake, but otherwise they’ve stuck to what I expected. 

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my reading of their intentions is right.
Tim Fell

Why did Morgan McSweeney take The Thick of It as a training manual, not a satire?
Toby Morgan

Suggested Reading

Letter of the week: Nigel Farage, the biggest charlatan of all

Reader Letters

Re: “Inside Starmer’s Shambles” by James Ball (TNW #460)

Another great article by the excellent James Ball. Starmer is toast. The person who deserves to be leader is one who is bold enough to advocate for applying to rejoin the customs union, reforming the electoral system (thus working with other progressive parties) and standing up to Trump in solidarity with our European friends. 

The tragedy is that maybe no such person exists.
Brian Ronson

Thank you, James Ball, for a catalogue of angst, rage, misery, pessimism, despair and a familiar modern diet of hysterical catastrophising. On a quick scan, I counted the words alienated (x4), fuck (x2), toxic (x2), war (x2), horrendous, farce, crisis, mutiny, enraged, disintegrate, enraged, despairing, disaster. Plenty of use of the doomster’s thesaurus no doubt!

I know things aren’t great, but would the story be any different under any PM or any party? Do we really need any more reporting that leaves you feeling utterly depressed and hopeless? Isn’t it time for a little more hope?
Adrian Tissier
Norwich, Norfolk

Re: “Assisted dying will kill by mistake” by Sonia Sodha (TNW #460)

Assisted dying and the death penalty are not comparable, and I was saddened to see Sonia make this awful conjunction as if assisted dying was only about killing and not the caring, thoughtful choice under hard circumstances that it really is. 
Susan Tekin

The risk of assisting a death where the person has not consented in good faith must be weighed against the certainty that there are many, many people who would like a civilised, peaceful, painless death, with loved ones at hand, at the time of their choosing. I’d say the moral and practical calculus tilts strongly in favour of assisted dying.

By all means, make the tests of a person’s sincerity stringent, and where there are doubts, hold off. But where there is no doubt of a person’s authenticity, it would be barbaric to deny them such basic dignity.
RSP Zatsen

I hope that Sonia Sodha never suffers the terrible fate of watching a loved one literally suffocate to death over a period of months as a result of COPD. If she did, then she wouldn’t come out with this kind of claptrap.
Michael McKeown

Sonia Sodha should be congratulated for her consistent challenge to the Assisted Dying Bill. Whatever arguments are offered in its defence, the necessary legal assumption that we operate as rational beings unless proven otherwise is a clinical fiction, and as clinicians are being asked to play a key role, this is important. 

Even the most plausible assisted dying decision will reveal only a proportion of the psychological iceberg, whether of patient, doctor or lawyer. There will always be mental vulnerabilities: misunderstood, repressed or discounted. Whatever else this bill is, it is psychologically reckless, and alarmingly naive.
Dr Andrew Blewett FRCPsych

Re: “Hey liberals! What you gonna do?” by Matthew d’Ancona (TNW #460)

Alastair Campbell made similar points in his great book But What Can I Do? In essence, his advice is: don’t sit on your hands, engage and do something.
Guy Masters

Thanks for a fascinating piece. Ever since I read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance back in 1975, I’ve been interested in the idea of quality. I have long thought that in essence it cannot be measured.

But since 1979, governments and other UK institutions have increasingly insisted that quality CAN be quantified – hence league tables, feedback questionnaires etc. This profound misreading of the concept of quality is captured by C Thi Nguyen’s idea of “value collapse”, as mentioned by Matthew d’Ancona.
Richard Woodcock

BELOW THE LINE

Re: Rats in a Sack on Bev Turner’s Donald Trump interview (TNW #460)

I hope they broadcast the interview unedited and in full. If not, I’m suing GB News for £6bn. 
Adam Ramsay

Re: “How the BBC can rebuild itself” by Jessica Cecil (TNW #460).

The BBC won public trust because it broadcast news that was true. They must return to that standard. Comment is different. The BBC should make clear every time what is news, and what is comment.
Alisoun Gardner-Medwin

I was glad to read Jessica Cecil urging a calm, open-minded hearing for the BBC.

Donald Trump bellowed all the inflammatory words quoted by Panorama, the Capitol was stormed and ransacked, a policeman died and many people were injured.

If his lawsuit goes to court, game, set and match to the BBC, m’lud.
Ken Daly
Taunton, Somerset 

Re: “The child killers of the Costa del Sol” by Graham Keeley (TNE #460).

What a shocking story. I guess murder seems to such teenagers to be like a videogame shooting zombies. How do we raise children to have empathy for others and to foresee the consequences of their actions?
Anita Roy