Letters: Bankrupt Birmingham shows that Labour still can’t manage money
SIR – The bankruptcy of the Labour-controlled Birmingham City Council (report, September 6)[1] is further proof that Labour always demands ever-more money to feed its bureaucracies.
Other examples are Sadiq Khan’s administration in London and the government in Wales. Labour cannot manage money – except to insist on more for less.
I wonder how many officials in Birmingham have six-figure salaries and work three days a week.
Anthony ClarkKendal, Cumbria
SIR – The citizens of Birmingham are entitled to ask what their rates have been spent on. Certainly it wasn’t the things they care about, such as road repairs, weekly bin collections and keeping schools open. Instead they see money wasted on diversity officers, failing IT initiatives and council buildings devoid of staff who are working from home. The suggestion that Birmingham residents need to suffer a 10 per cent increase in tax (report, September 6[2]) is outrageous.
George KellyBuckingham
SIR – Birmingham City Council made no provision for its liability in relation to equal-pay claims, assuming that if it went bust, it would be bailed out by central government – which it has the audacity to blame for its problems.
From funding the Commonwealth Games to overspending on new IT systems, its current disastrous financial predicament was well and truly made in Birmingham.
John StewartTerrick, Buckinghamshire
SIR – BBC News at Six blames “the Conservative Government ” every time it finds something to criticise, but when it reported Birmingham City Council’s bankruptcy, it never once mentioned that it is Labour-controlled.
David WaltersCorbridge, Northumberland
SIR – I served for 12 years on a district council and found that we elected members were mainly there to rubber-stamp non-elected officers’ decisions. They loved meetings. Meetings would be arranged to decide who would attend a new meeting. This would require perhaps five councillors to vote things through. Not unusually, pre-pre-meetings would be called, at which just three councillors would be required. If the main meeting went into the afternoon, we all had a good tuck in – on the ratepayers, of course.
Trevor BamfieldCapel le Ferne, Kent
SIR – I was a local councillor and ran a campaign to prevent commuters from as far away as Camberley parking round our train station in Sunningdale, which had a speedy service to London. It took five years to get double-yellow lines on the A30 and other local roads. Some now know me as Mr Yellow Line.
Duncan RaynerSunningdale, Berkshire
Concrete crisis
SIR – Where is the groundswell of protest at the current education crisis facing our children as a result of problems with concrete (Letters, September 6[3])? If any other group in society was similarly threatened there would be an outpouring of rage, not platitudes and apathy.
Elizabeth MaxtedFeering, Essex
SIR – Has everyone forgotten that the country was battling Covid in 2021?
The Treasury had given lots of support to schools, as well as households, businesses and the NHS. It is not surprising that investment in school rebuilding was cut at that time.
Stuart HicksReading, Berkshire
China’s prisoners
SIR – Zhang Zhan, a Chinese journalist who was jailed in 2020 for reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan, has been admitted to hospital following two years of hunger strikes.
Sadly, the media is largely silent on the plight of China’s beleaguered political prisoners. In China, prison sentences too often turn out to be death sentences. The memory of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo still lingers, six years after his death, which came while serving an 11-year jail sentence for demanding an end to one-party rule. It’s time for the free world to stand up for Ms Zhang – and other political prisoners who cannot speak for themselves.
Brian StuckeyDenver, Colorado, United States
Reporting crime
SIR – I agree with Jean Ferguson-Davie regarding the non-acceptance of letters by public bodies (Letters, September 6[4]). Just before Covid I had a new chainsaw stolen from my property. Tired of repeated, unsuccessful attempts to report it by phone, I put the details in a letter and took it to Whitchurch police station.
I found the station closed (surplus to requirements, apparently). There was, however, a “base” for officers behind the local hospital. I took my letter there, only to find it locked, with no letter box or doorbell. Being nearly 80 and of a resourceful nature, I took a screwdriver from my car and forced a window to drop my missive through.
The following day two officers arrived to admonish me and say that, the environment notwithstanding, I should have taken my letter to Wrexham, almost 20 miles away.
They did, however, give me a pen to put my postcode on the replacement chainsaw.
Philip RoyWhitchurch, Shropshire
Enlisted men
SIR – I am intrigued by the number of men sent to do the shopping with lists. My husband went to Tesco once but never got further than the wine aisle.
Elizabeth Buckley Frampton on Severn, Gloucestershire
SIR – I suspect a not-so-subtle campaign on the part of shoppers who fail to buy the right items on lists (Letters, September 6[5]). If they get it wrong often enough, their partners will do the shopping themselves.
Peter RobertsCrickhowell, Brecknockshire
SIR – My household to-do list is long and seems never-ending. My husband’s, however, is concise and simple to follow. It merely reads: Bins.
Catherine KidsonBradfield, Berkshire
Monster naming party
SIR – James Darling’s letter (September 5)[6] mentions the scientific name given to the Loch Ness Monster – Nessiteras rhombopteryx – by Sir Peter Scott and Dr Robert Rines, which was published in the magazine Nature on December 11 1975.
The point of establishing this name was to allow Nessie to be included in the Conservation of Wild Creatures and Wild Plants Act that was being passed at the time.
Various possibilities for the name, which had to be in the standard Greek formula, had been discussed by a group of people including Constance Whyte, Tim Dinsdale and David James MP of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, Sir Peter, Dr Rines and myself.
Dr Rines had taken some underwater photographs with a 16mm time-lapse camera equipped with a flash system provided by Harold Edgerton, the inventor of the electronic flash. Two frames appeared to show a diamond-shaped fin on the body of a creature. On that basis the team decided that the name would be “Nessie monster with the diamond-shaped fin”. Sir Peter informed me that the final version was therefore to be Nessiteras adamantopteryx.
I was the classics scholar on the team and immediately phoned Sir Peter to point out that the Greek word adámas referred to hardness and not shape, and advised him to change to rhombopteryx.
So when crossword enthusiasts at several newspapers read the Nature article and worked out the anagram “monster hoax by Sir Peter S”, I was able to guarantee that Sir Peter was not responsible.
A few days later, Dr Rines produced an alternative anagram: “Yes both pix are monsters. R”.
Alan WilkinsAnnan, Dumfriesshire
Escape from camp 78
SIR – Simon Heffer reminds us that a great escape of Allied prisoners of war in Italy happened 80 years ago this month (Features, September 6[7]).
One of the prison camps, No 78, near Sulmona in the Abruzzo, survives as a largely intact historical monument. Every year, the perilous escape south to Allied lines is commemorated by hundreds of people – mostly students – who undertake the arduous three-day Freedom Trail march from Sulmona across the Majella mountain range in the footsteps of those prisoners of war.
It is another reminder: never underestimate young people.
Christopher McGovernPunnett’s Town, East Sussex
A way to honour Elizabeth II’s life of service
A view from Rosyth of the Queensferry Crossing and the Forth road and rail bridges
Credit: Alamy
SIR – With the anniversary of the death of our much-loved late Queen falling this week, the question arises as to how we can honour her memory and recognise her superlative public service as head of state of this and other countries.
With the UK’s soaring national debt, rapidly rising prices and strained budgets, an expensive monument is out of the question. However, the renaming of a suitable public structure would be an almost cost-free alternative. How about renaming the magnificent Queensferry Crossing, which carries the M90 motorway across the Firth of Forth between Edinburgh and Fife, and was opened by the late Queen in 2017, as the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge?
At 1.7 miles long and 683ft high, this is a bridge on a royal scale, and, with a design life of 120 years, it could honour her memory well into the 22nd century.
Otto InglisCrossgates, Fife
GPs’ families know how hard they really work
SIR – I read Isabel Oakeshott’s article about GPs (“NHS care has become a festering wound on the face of our nation”, Comment, August 19[8]).
I am nine years old and my mum is a GP. On the days she works I barely get to see her because of the hours she puts in.
Ms Oakeshott writes that, during the Covid pandemic, many GPs refused to leave their homes to see patients. I spent most of the lockdowns in a key-worker school. When my parents got home from work, they changed at the front door before coming into the house, and we were not allowed to touch them until they had had a shower.
I think GPs work very hard.
Laura NobleEdinburgh
SIR – For the past few days I have been suffering from a minor – albeit painful – health problem. I decided to seek advice at the local pharmacy, where I was told that I should really visit the doctor.
The pharmacist telephoned the surgery to speak to the doctor. Unfortunately there was no answer, but she suggested that I go there anyway.
Reception wasn’t manned, but I knocked on the door of the doctor’s secretary who told me to go and sit in the waiting room, which I did.
After 10 minutes the door opened, a patient exited, and I was welcomed in and had my consultation. This resulted in the writing of a prescription, which I took back to the pharmacy where it was dispensed. All this took a little over one hour.Needless to say, I am on holiday in France.
Alan HollowoodShillingstone, Dorset
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References
- ^ (report, September 6) (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ report, September 6 (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Letters, September 6 (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Letters, September 6 (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Letters, September 6 (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ September 5) (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Features, September 6 (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ “NHS care has become a festering wound on the face of our nation”, Comment, August 19 (www.telegraph.co.uk)
- ^ here (secure.telegraph.co.uk)