The two pages allocated to coverage of the first full day’s events in the Winter Olympics were tainted by an inexplicable pillorying of the Norwegian winner of the women’s 7.5km+7.5km skiathlon, Therese Johaug (“Tainted start as first gold of Games is won by banned doper Johaug”, Sport). Rightly suspended for 18 months for a positive drugs test and missing out on the 2018 Olympics, this amazing athlete has served her time and she won the event in magnificent style.
How did her victory taint the start of the Games? Is there a presupposition of recidivism in respect of an athlete who has broken the rules or do we, as an enlightened society, wipe the sheet clean after a fresh start? Her prowess was certainly acknowledged in the report but I have never fully understood the meaning of “damning with faint praise”. Now I do.
David Parton
Seaford, East Sussex
Disenfranchised by Dorries
Pity me, a poor disenfranchised voter living in the constituency of Nadine Dorries (“And in the prime minister’s corner… Dorries, Dorries and more Dorries”, News). We have an MP defending the indefensible; excusing the inexcusable; thickening the sickening smear on Keir Starmer; behaving like a Trump soundbite. She has taken no voter soundings. I have heard nothing in my conversations with friends and neighbours other than total revulsion at Boris Johnson’s behaviour. Yet Dorries is the banner waver for this dreadful man. Her interview with Charlie Stayt was horrifying.
MPs in this parliament seem interested only in their own skins and futures. Dorries is a prime example. My vote counted for nothing last time because our constituency suffers from serf syndrome, the condition that has plagued ordinary people for centuries. Lucky Tory constituents who have an MP with the courage to recognise the social damage this man has caused and will continue to cause unless he is replaced.
Michael Newman
Shefford, Bedfordshire
Give prisoners the vote
Gordon Cropper rightly says that “the prison service is an unpopular posting for civil servants” and “low in the estimation of politicians” (“Punishment without care”, Letters). This could be addressed by giving prisoners the vote, as most of the rest of western Europe does.
David Murray
Wallington, Surrey
I’ll tell you who they were…
I read with interest both the article on Kenneth Branagh’s film Belfast and subsequent letter (“There is no ‘they’ in Northern Ireland”). I don’t entirely agree with the letter writer’s comments on the issue of “they”. To me as an 11-year-old child living in a “mixed” estate in a small town in Northern Ireland, there were three components to “they”:
• The “Tartan gang”, thugs who ran up our road shouting obscenities to the Catholic families, breaking our windows and threatening to burn us out;
• Our Protestant neighbours, once dear friends who retreated indoors and, when meeting us many months later, snubbed us. The most hurtful part was when my very best friend whom I had known since little, blanked me when I tried to speak to her a couple of months later. The Catholic families were dislocated in so many ways;
• Agents of the state, the army and police who stood at the bottom of our road, motionless, passive while we were terrified, even though our mother assured us we would be safe as “the RUC and army would protect us”. They did no such thing and we had to empty our houses and flee, allowing the marauding gangs to “pick a Fenian’s house” for their friends and families. No counselling for us.
Also the letter writer uses the innocuous-sounding phrase “put out” in relation to people being intimidated and forced to flee their homes. “Putting somebody out” today means inconveniencing them but, believe you me, for my family and our Catholic neighbours it was a lot more than than that; it was ethnic cleansing on religious grounds.
Superb I am sure it is, but I for one won’t be watching Mr Branagh’s film, as there will be far too many bad memories for me.
Name and address supplied
What about the tenants?
Zoe Wood’s article exactly encapsulates the government obsession with property ownership (“Thousands of renters in England could miss out on council tax cut”, News). At the core of its housing policy lies the dogma of possession: an “affordable” house is one that we can buy, albeit with help from the taxpayer; the idea that we need accommodation that is affordable to tenants is alien to the central dogma. It is entirely in line with this idea that many of the rebates will go to owners rather than tenants.
That the underlying policy results in a catastrophic rise in the cost of buying a house and an even more catastrophic shortage of rentable property appears irrelevant. The owner, landlord, whatever, is all-important and damn the rest.
Roger Iredale
West Coker, Somerset
So much for office romance
Stephanie Merritt draws on her own experience to demonstrate her reasons for being “on the side of workplace romances” (“Sure, let’s be wary of abuse of power, but do we really want to outlaw office romance?”, Comment). As a Gen Xer who “owes her existence” to a workplace romance, she writes in sympathy of those who lament the time before #MeToo, when “office flirtations” were less tightly regulated.
Merritt’s article centres around Jeff Zucker, who resigned from his job as president of CNN after his sexual relationship with a colleague was exposed. Merritt says the relationship was consensual, so there should be no problem. As he was president of a multinational news channel, reducing this to an “office romance” between “consenting adults” overlooks the gendered power relations this “scandal” reveals. Every outpouring of grief and support for Zucker is evidence of a sycophantic hero-worshipping that serves to keep everyone under the spell of a white male leader. The drama surrounding Zucker’s resignation from CNN is not about “romance”. It is a perverse symptom of free market capitalism, celebrity culture and addiction to power that has gone off the deep end.
Lorna Donoghue
London, SW2
Lovely Jubbly, Your Maj
Somewhere in the corner of heaven reserved for sitcom scriptwriters, John Sullivan is reading about the “Platinum Jubbly” commemorative china and wishing he could have lived just long enough to write a Platinum Jubilee special of Only Fools and Horses (“I can’t wait to celebrate the Queen’s lovely Jubbly”, Comment). You can just see Del and Rodders down Peckham market flogging the “limited edition” and “unique” tableware in time for the celebrations. Perhaps Sir David Jason, in his Del Trotter persona, will visit Buckingham Palace in June and present Her Majesty with a selection of the items. That would surely give her, and the nation, a laugh.
Paul F Faupel
Somersham, Cambridgeshire
