Not many readers will have failed to notice the irony of the front page of last week’s Observer: a masthead proclaiming “Free magazine – The Great British Seaside”, and underneath: “20,000: the major sewage leaks total in past decade”. Then open the supplement to read “The water’s lovely… come on in’ – but only in Rachel Cooke’s “glory days”!
Elizabeth Adams
London N22
Anita Sethi is right to praise North Landing, Yorkshire, for its loveliness (“Oh I do like to be beside the seaside”). However, it is not “off the beaten track and quite unknown”. An hourly bus runs from Bridlington to North Landing, where there are two cafes, a fish and chip van, ice-cream van, large car park and toilets. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust runs popular birdwatching trips from the beach in traditional fishing boats. The beach also featured in the finale of the 2016 film version of Dad’s Army.
Virginia Schroder
Bridlington, East Yorkshire
Fewer people is no bad thing
Sonia Sodha’s article on declining population falls into the usual trap of seeing falling population as a negative (“The falling birthrate threatens a disaster so costly no politician dares think about it”). Britain is an overpopulated country atop an overpopulated planet. Rather than seeing falling population as something to stop, governments need to see it as an opportunity to invest in new ways of coping with this rebalancing of the earning v non-earning population and elder care technology – a new social contract and new expectations. I’m sure this won’t be easy but, for the sake of the planet, it has to be done.
Nicholas Honner
Seattle, US
A window on Sharpe’s world
I enjoyed this appreciative article about Tom Sharpe, which, in addition to Sharpe’s poignant poetry, highlighted the importance of his satirical and hilarious 1971 novel, Riotous Assembly (“The anguished secret love story behind the satire of Tom Sharpe”).
I was working in Truslove & Hanson and the Times Bookshop in Knightsbridge, and many of our aristocratic customers were heavily invested in apartheid South Africa. As soon as we received copies of the book, I went hot-foot to the offices of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, where I obtained large posters of South African police on horseback clubbing black protesters. These formed the backdrop to our window display. Given the location, this created quite a stir. The most gratifying moment was when a gent told us in an upper-class accent that, unless we took down the display by the end of the day, in the morning we would find a brick had been thrown through the window. Tom Sharpe had been truly vindicated, our windows survived and mirth prevailed.
Colin McCulloch
Marlow, Buckinghamshire
I’m no diesel dinosaur
We are a small business with a van. About 18 months ago, as we approached the point of either the “balloon payment” or exchanging the van, I spent many hours trying to find an electric equivalent. I would ring up dealers, only to be told there was none available or that there was a minimum two-year waiting list. There were also very few with the kind of range we need. So I was irritated by the headline “Carbon emissions from vans still rising as UK drivers cling to diesel”. There is no clinging here – we simply have no choice.
Ruth Weston
Llanfyllin, Powys
Shameful Covid silence
The silence around Covid during the election campaign has been shameful (“An amnesty for Covid lockdown breakers? Robert Buckland plays the rest of us for fools”). The key question about who is culpable for the hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths has been scandalously ignored by the major parties. When did it become acceptable for thousands of lives to be needlessly discarded?
Labour’s commitment to a Covid corruption commissioner is welcome, but nowhere near enough. Committing to delivering justice for the bereaved by holding those involved to account should be Labour’s starting point. The devastating impact of dysfunctional PPE equipment, obtained by fraud, was central to the appalling death rate. Corruption and social murder: that is the link Labour should be making.
Joe Sim, emeritus professor, school of justice studies, Liverpool John Moores University; Steve Tombs, emeritus professor, department of social policy and criminology, the Open University, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
Put state education first
Thanks for Eva Wiseman’s excellent piece (“The schools debate is asking all the wrong questions”). It opened up what has been a stultified debate about VAT on private schools that has too frequently favoured the side of the apparently cash-strapped middle class, as if this is where the privations of social change are felt at their keenest. Far too much government policy has been directed at guarding people’s private privilege and the fallout is all around us: homelessness, poverty, hunger.
Lemn Sissay wrote about children in the care system as needing the very best of care by the state, not the worst. State education serves 93% of the population; it is not some sick relative of private schooling. It has to be funded to be a system we’re all proud of, and work towards there being no need for private schooling at all. There couldn’t be a more apt time for a change of government. Tax those who can afford to pay more to help those who have less.
Kate Domaille
Southampton
Letting it all hang out
I’m an American expat living in the UK, and I can tell you those are not short-shorts that Paul Mescal is wearing (“Paul Mescal can pull off short-shorts, but can ordinary men?”). If you really want to see men in short-shorts, take a look at what men in the US were wearing in the 70s and early 80s. Tom Selleck, Burt Reynolds and regular guys were all wearing short-shorts.
I have a pic of my dad wearing them in the mid-70s while on a family trip to the zoo with us kids. His giblets were clearly hanging out, and he wasn’t concerned at all. When my mom said something about it to him, he replied: “If you don’t like it, don’t look.” If only we women could get away with saying that.
Tamytha Hopkins
Belfast
