The Week - UK (2022-04-09)

25

Profit distorts child care

To The Guardian

I have worked in children’s

social care for many years and

remember when privatisation

was first promoted. Rather like

academies and free schools, the

rhetoric was about handing

over control and rescuing

services from bureaucratic

control. Gradually, private

equity has taken over and

started cost-cutting to maxi-

mise profit. One such move

was to sell the properties in the

urban areas where the children

had grown up and replace

them with cheaper alternatives,

often disused farmhouses and

remote cottages – as authorities

placing vulnerable children

have to take what is on offer.

When a child needs a

placement is when there should

be a suitable vacancy – yet, to

maximise profit, facilities need

to be full most of the time.

Only financial investment can

resolve this problem; profit

means limiting vacancies, while

choice and availability require

carrying vacancies within the

system. Add the fact that the

millions of pounds of profit

going to shareholders is all

taxpayers’ money, provided

to care for vulnerable children,

and we have a clear example

of why we should not be

privatising public services.

Roy Grimwood, Market

Drayton, Shropshire

Villagers don’t like wind

To The Sunday Times

Your readers’ poll “Should the

UK build more onshore wind

farms?” has an obvious flaw.

Ask the views of 1,000 people

in a city where there are no

turbines, but where a lot of

electricity is used, and they will

say turbines are a good idea.

Ask 1,000 villagers in the areas

where turbines taller than the

ancient church steeple would

be built, and all except the

landowner will say no. I much

prefer last week’s poll, in which

an overwhelming majority

favoured nuclear power: more

reliable and less obtrusive than

wind, taking a lot less land,

and statistically safer.

Tony Killeen, Halberton,

Devon

No way to treat refugees

To The Guardian

The UK’s visa system is indeed

causing great distress to

already traumatised

Ukrainians. Why should a

mother and child fleeing war

be expected to produce

documents proving their

residence in Ukraine prior to

1 January 2022? Or indeed

the child’s birth certificate?

One woman hoping to come

to our town, who I have been

in contact with, says that she

feels the certainty of her

basement preferable to the

uncertain limbo of waiting for

visa approval in a reception

centre in Warsaw.

Her instincts are possibly

right; her child ended up in

hospital with rotavirus caused

by the unsanitary conditions

they are living in while they

wait. For goodness sake, let’s

cut the bureaucracy. These

people need our help, not

more trauma.

Emma Lilley, Presteigne,

Powys

Classes at the BBC

To The Times

Mark Piggott writes of the

BBC seeking to employ more

working-class staff. When I

joined the corporation in the

1960s, there were many junior

clerical, secretarial or manual

jobs that could be undertaken

by people with a handful of

O-levels or less, and I can think

of many from all regions and

walks of life who started out

in these roles and worked their

way up into jobs in technical,

production and management

areas. This was aided by a

scheme that allowed people

to move around departments.

Many of these junior

opportunities have disappeared

because of automation, or have

been contracted to outside

sources, and the majority of

production staff are now

freelance, a way of work that

has more financial insecurities.

Amanda Lunt, Chichester

Roman injustice

To the Financial Times

The UK Government and

UK media scapegoating of

Roman Abramovich is

hypocritical, unprincipled

and against British,

Ukrainian and the Russian

people’s interests. An

international lawyer in

the 1990s, I have followed

his career (though I have

never met or worked for

him). Allegations of

kleptocracy and of

influence peddling must

be seriously considered.

But English law prides itself on

the principle of “innocent, until

proved guilty”.

Abramovich is the most

charitable of the oligarchs

(according to Bloomberg in

2013), and has donated over

$4bn to Russian and UK

charities. He was praised

in our High Court for his

transparency about his own

role in the corrupt Russian

economy during Boris Yeltsin’s

reign. Russia’s Chukotka

thrived during Abramovich’s

time as governor. In the UK,

he helped finance free meals

for 78,000 during Covid and

advanced Israeli-Palestinian

peace initiatives with football.

By contrast, many businessmen

worldwide and in the UK have

grown fat through improper

conduct, escaped justice, and

done nothing for others.

Abramovich has pledged the

proceeds of the Chelsea sale for

the benefit of all victims of the

war in Ukraine. Apart from his

name being poisoned in the

UK, he appears to have been

actually poisoned for helping

peace negotiations.

Abramovich deserves a more

balanced media coverage.

Andrew M. Rosemarine,

Salford

A cheesy strategy

To The Daily Telegraph

The first reference to a “lunch

for a ploughman” may date

from 1837. However, as the

country’s longest-serving

publican (40 years) at the same

hostelry, I would point out that

the dish we know today as a

ploughman’s dates from a

1960s advertising campaign by

Dairy Crest, the marketing arm

of the Milk Marketing Board,

in an attempt to shift unsold

quantities of raw milk.

Mark Justin, London

9 April 2022 THE WEEK

LETTERS

Pick of the week’s correspondence

© SPECTATOR

● Letters have been edited

Exchange of the week

Giving Putin an escape route

To The Times

Dominic Lawson argues that the West should not offer a

solution to the Ukraine crisis that allows Vladimir Putin to

save face. I disagree. As the great American journalist Walter

Lippmann wrote in 1961, at the height of the Cold War: “This

being the nuclear age, it is the paramount rule of international

politics that a great nuclear power should not put another

great nuclear power in a position where it must choose

between suicide and surrender”. President Kennedy allowed

Nikita Khrushchev to extricate the Soviet Union from the

Cuban missile crisis of 1962 without humiliation, and nuclear

Armageddon was prevented. The West should similarly offer

Putin an escape route from the present crisis in Ukraine to

prevent a possible catastrophic nuclear war 60 years later.

This would be not appeasement, but statesmanship.

Peter Henrick, Birmingham

To The Times

Dominic Lawson is right: only Ukrainians can decide what to

do about the integrity of their territory, and to try to box them

in at the early stages of this conflict is morally unacceptable.

It is not for President Macron or anyone else to negotiate on

their behalf or try to save Putin’s face. The West should be very

wary of trying to push them into an unacceptable form of part-

surrender. What message would that send for the future? Not

necessarily one in which Ukraine is safe. How do you stop a

bully coming back for more if you give him any part of what

he is demanding?

Jennifer Ray, Morden, London

“Can we afford to go anywhere yet?”