The reason Donald Trump won is because he exemplifies men who think only of themselves. Civic responsibility is about caring for others, for everyone, not just oneself, and the easiest way to defeat democracy is to limit access to civic education, which is what has happened in the US public schools over the last 40 years.
The people who support Trump are not less smart, but they are truly less well educated in these basic principles. It is this that makes it possible for them to abandon the morality of civil society. As for the women who support Trump, I am dumbfounded. All his supporters have voted against their own interests. They will lose their health care and there will be inflation due to tariffs that will make it even harder for them to make the mortgage.
Margot Miller
Easton, Maryland, US
Simon Tisdall has it right (“Contempt for human rights, trashing allies: the world’s populists are rubbing their hands with glee”, Comment). I’m tired of reading how Trump’s victory is due to the failure of the Democrats’ campaign or that people voted for him because they felt ignored or because of rising prices.
They voted for him because they didn’t care that he was a mendacious, racist, misogynist, corrupt, ignorant, narcissistic conman and felon. They decided to ignore reality and live in a fantasy where all that was lies. Trump doesn’t care about for those who voted for him, and he will seek vengeance on all those who didn’t. Trump doesn’t serve anybody but himself.
Kevin Porter
Wolverhampton
Peter Hyman’s piece about Trump’s victory (“We can rage about Donald Trump. Or we can be curious about why he appealed to so many”, Comment) raises important points for middle-class people working in white-collar jobs.
Specifically, the laughable idea that those of us with degrees are somehow above working-class “people who can actually change a flat tyre”. In his book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, US anthropologist David Graeber lays bare the absurdity and redundancy of most modern graduates’ roles in the workplace. It makes the case that in the west we have bred a generation or two of people whose jobs do not produce anything tangible, nor meet any real need, and who are paid a fortune.
It is no surprise that there’s a backlash against this class of effectively useless, even parasitic, people. I should know, I’m describing myself and my work situation.
Tom Cole
London N13
Universities are accountable
Far from universities being left to mark their own homework, Sonia Sodha can rest assured that there is no shortage of people to check our working (“England’s universities flex their muscles to hike fees, while students get a bum deal”, Comment).
As well as external examiners, accrediting bodies, the Office for Students and the Teaching Excellence Framework scrutinising teaching quality, we also have myriad league tables rating us on factors such as graduate employability. Importantly, students also have a voice, via the National Student Survey and student organisations. Falling behind on any of these measures has serious consequences, particularly for the bottom line, and so there is real accountability in the system.
What we can’t do is solve graduate underemployment and the burden of the student loan system. Without more graduate jobs, university leavers will continue to find the job market over-competitive and disappointing. Without more public investment in further and higher education and an overhaul of the fees system, the burden of funding will continue to fall disproportionately on students. Guaranteeing highly paid graduate jobs for all is impossible under current conditions and to pin the problem on “low-quality courses” is to let the government off the hook.
Dr Phil Bull
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester
Cop29 and farm emissions
It is shocking and depressing that global greenhouse gas emissions are still rising after so many pledges to cut them (Global boiling, mass flooding and Trump: 10 big talking points for Cop29, News). Animal farming is one of the major sources of emissions, and so the increasing consumption of animal produce, encouraged by enormous subsidies, is part of the problem. At Cop29, the UK should be arguing the case for a worldwide ban on these subsidies, which could free up funding to subsidise the production of fruits, vegetables and pulses.
A shift in consumption would benefit the climate, reduce the pressure on the rainforest and other natural spaces, reduce water pollution, improve our health and mean that fewer animals were forced to endure the misery of farming and slaughter.
Iain Green, Director, Animal Aid
Tonbridge, Kent
Stamping out vaping
Martha Gill offers a cautionary tale that Australia’s 2021 prescription-only vapes policy saw low uptake of prescription vapes and a rise in smoking, citing 2022 data (“In the moral panic over vaping, we risk forgetting that cigarettes kill”, Comment).
The policy was gutted by a conservative backbench revolt, which allowed vapers to import vapes at will and homeopathic levels of prosecution for ex-pharmacy vape sales. Why buy from a pharmacy when every second convenience store sold vapes openly? In 2024, the Labor government banned all imports and introduced high fines for selling from 1 October. Illicit vapes prices have tripled, knocking out most teenage access.
Simon Chapman, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of Sydney
Moor money for royals
Every owner of every boat moored on rivers in Cornwall and parts of Devon pays fundus; rental for the patch of riverbed owned by the Duchy of Cornwall over which the boats bob around (“How long will we stomach sermons from royals made rich by their own charities?”, Comment).
Pete Mitchell
Ventnor, Isle of Wight
Reinventing repairables
It seems there really is nothing new under the sun (“UK student invents repairable kettle that anyone can fix”, News). I’m sure older readers will remember that in the 1970s electric kettles were easily repairable and spare parts available. If the heating element failed, it was a simple matter to unscrew it and fit a new one.
Fred Pickering
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire
The bee’s knees
Anyone wanting to avoid adulterated honey needs only to come to my little village where our general store stocks four varieties of pure local honey, produced by bees kept in the village in the care of four resident beekeepers (“Nine in ten honey samples from UK retailers fail authenticity test, News). Can any other village match our ratio of one beekeeper to roughly 100 people?
Nigel Melville
Abbotsbury, Dorset
Here come the Pipkins…
Professor Dean should not be too disappointed that his name was not adopted by a pop star (“Elton who?”, Letters). He can console himself in the knowledge that for a generation of children who grew up watching Pipkins, Hartley Hare was far more memorable.
Michael Smith
Artane, Dublin
