Andy Haldane, co-author of the government’s big levelling-up report, wants to pair a swathe of the UK’s major material needs with the thrust of achievements in Renaissance Florence (Report, 5 February). It would be difficult to entertain a more idiotic vision.
Florence had no coordination between public expenditure and urban improvement. Taxation staggered from one need to the next. Churches and rich patrons were the prime movers behind all major architectural commissions. Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci deserted Florence for more promising venues. The Medici began to put their hands into the public till even under the 15th-century republic. Any conception of the public good was rudimentary. The political upper class swiftly made its peace with the overmighty Medici in the 16th century. Enough said.
Lauro Martines
London
• Levelling up isn’t just about a new bus route or train line, it’s about rebuilding the foundations of this country’s prosperity. At the heart of levelling up should be the reform of our education system. We need to teach creativity, which helps people solve problems. We need to value engineers and tradespeople such as electricians, plumbers and gas fitters, so we need more focus on those skills at ages of 16-plus. It’s ironic that the person in charge of levelling up is the one who took England’s education system back to learning by rote and destroyed what would really make a difference.
Michael Sanders
London
• One of the projects that will apparently receive funding in the white paper on levelling up (Report, 2 February) is money for the electrification of the Midland mainline north from Bedford to Sheffield. Some 15 years ago, I was a member of South Yorkshire Passenger Transport and I can remember councillors welcoming the news that the rail line up to Sheffield was to be electrified. Since then, this announcement has been trotted out a number of times, with a lengthy hiatus when we were promised an extension to the city from the proposed HS2 route to Leeds instead. Work is finally beginning on electrifying the line from Bedford to Market Harborough. Yet again, we are faced with a recycled project with recycled funds, the eventual completion of which stretches further and further into the future.
Sylvia Dunkley
Sheffield
• Lisa Nandy is right to point to the vacuum at the heart of the levelling-up plans. Tagged on to the prosperous south-east, the Isle of Wight has been underfunded for decades in terms of money per pupil. We have had a gutful of education change and boast such a mosaic of secondary provision that it lacks coherence. Local housing is well beyond the means of residents thanks to second homes and holiday lets cornering the market.
Our ferry links remain among the most expensive in the world. We are deprived of subsidies enjoyed by other coastal crossings. This has led to higher prices and less frequent crossings, which have affected social mobility and trade. We don’t need more of the same tired policies. We need levelling up of the money that we have been deprived of in the past and involvement of island people in their future.
Yvonne Williams
Ryde, Isle of Wight
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