The Times - UK (2022-05-17)

28 Tuesday May 17 2022 | the times

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building for 12 to 20 years, also seems

far too long. Her third option, moving

to a new site outside London, seems to

miss the point of parliament: it should

surely be in the centre of our capital

city. Moreover, as an architect, I find it

profoundly depressing that she thinks

that the best our British architects

could come up with would be a

“glass-and-steel cathedral”. Of course

our parliament should stay in its

wonderful building, but could we not

set up a task force, like the one for

developing the vaccine, a consortium

of bright imaginative people, those

with a record for getting things done?

Sue Martin Mason

Titchwell, Norfolk

Sir, Clare Foges is right to insist that

parliament should vacate the Palace

of Westminster while it is being

restored, but where to? One solution

world be to build a ship capable of

accommodating MPs and their

spouses, cruising from port to port

round the UK. Debates could be held

in suitable local buildings and

parliamentarians could eat in

restaurants to give local economies a

boost. When the ship was moored in

Portsmouth, for example, MPs could

debate in the city’s Guildhall, or in

Sir, Libby Purves (“This year’s A-level

class deserves our sympathy”, May 16)

cites employers such as Sir James

Dyson who rate resilience above

A-stars. Surely the successful

navigation of four weeks of intensive

exams and the associated pressure,

and the final achievement of an A*, is

indicative of a high degree of

resilience? As a teacher of A-level

students for 35 years, I have seen many

students make phenomenal strides in

their understanding and ability to

think under pressure in the final few

months of the course, something that

stands them in excellent stead for life’s

future challenges.

Mark Brown

Lindfield, W Sussex

Watership downfall

Sir, Further to your article “Life

imitates art as developers declare

Watership Down victory” (May 14), my

father wrote Watership Down in 1966

and it was published 50 years ago. He

chose to write about the destruction of

greenfield sites for housing to draw

attention to what was happening to

our countryside. He chose Sandleford

as a site that he knew well and loved,

and which he also knew could be

targeted for development. How sad he

would be to see exactly that happening

in this case. It would seem that Fiver’s

vision will become dreadful reality

very soon if it is not stopped.

Rosamond Mahony

Farnham

Liverpool in one of the cathedrals.

The ship could also spend time in

Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast,

strengthening ties between the

nations. Modern cruise liners can

accommodate about 6,000

passengers, so providing every MP

with a suite would not be a problem.

Chris Partridge

Fishbourne, W Sussex

Sir, Clare Foges got it spot on when

she suggested that parliament decant.

May I suggest Northumberland as the

temporary home? The government

wants to level up the north, and this

county is England’s northernmost. It

is also the geographic centre of

Britain, as the mid point on the

longest north-south axis.

Jake Doxat

Thorncombe, Dorset

Sir, Why not move parliament to

Buckingham Palace while the repairs

are being done? Neither the Queen

nor Prince Charles wants to live there

and it would maintain the dignity of

parliament that having a concrete and

glass building would lose. It could also

save billions of pounds.

Philippa Evans

Hambledon, Surrey

Deterring moths

Sir, James Morrison (letter, May 16)

has a point about the efficacy of

mothballs. But who wants to walk

around in a jumper smelling of

naphthalene? A bar of soap in a

drawer is said to be an effective

deterrent against clothes moths.

Heather Willson

Bath

Art of the moon

Sir, The race to take the first piece of

art to the moon (report, May 14) may

already have been won. The crew of

Apollo 15 took a 3-inch metal

sculpture, Fallen Astronaut, to the

lunar surface at Hadley Rille and left

it there on August 1, 1971, with a

plaque bearing the names of all the

astronauts (and Russian cosmonauts)

known to have died.

Julian Lloyd

Chester

Knowing the drill

Sir, The German manufacturer of

Tim Cooper’s cordless drill (letter,

May 16) should be commended. I am

repeatedly frustrated by

manufacturers not including a

manual with their products, expecting

the customer to find one online. This

now includes the manufacturers of

motor vehicles. It is not always

convenient searching online for the

answer to a problem. Much easier to

reach into the glove compartment to

consult the printed manual.

Deborah Spirrett

Leeds

Stable monarchy

Sir, As an amateur walking stick

maker I was very pleased to see from

the photograph on your front page of

the Queen at the Windsor Horse

Show (May 16) that she has changed

to using a thumb stick. This will give

her more stability and confidence and

help her posture more than using the

seemingly ever-popular and shorter

“granny” stick, which gives very little

support at all.

Tim Jay

President emeritus, Royal College of

Chiropractors; Taunton, Somerset

Corrections and

clarifications

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Hunt’s view of NHS

Sir, I have been a nurse for more than
40 years and I agree with Jeremy
Hunt: I too have seen the best and the
worse of the NHS (Magazine,
May 14). The total neglect of basic
emergency care today is contributing
to poor-quality outcomes. There is no
real intentional neglect by clinical
staff. Instead this neglect is the result
of a lack of resources, which causes
long waiting times for ambulances.
There are also an insufficient number
of hospital beds and trained clinical
staff. This results in preventable
diseases such as sepsis occurring,
causing longer-term recovery if the
patient is lucky or, if not, ending in
long-term care or even death. No
amount of managers seem able to
solve this situation. Unfortunately the
NHS builds up empires and does not
like to reorganise them when they
need it. There needs to be a national
debate about the structure and future
of the NHS because it is s untenable
in its present form.
Judith Evans
Care co-ordinator and NHS nurse,
Pencelli, Powys

Sir, Given Jeremy Hunt’s six years in
charge of the NHS he must take some
responsibility for the state of the
health service and its culture. His
observations are hardly new. The
medical profession is notoriously slow
at recognising or learning from
mistakes; other organisations, for
example the airline industry,
thoroughly investigate an incident to
try to prevent it happening again. The
problem can be solved. However, the
question is whether the present
government, which has hardly set a
great example of learning from its
mistakes and which is led by someone
with a reputation for blaming
everyone else, will really be able to
deal with this.
Chris Kessell
Glenville, New York

Rehousing MPs while the builders are in

Sir, Moving out of parliament

permanently or temporarily would do

nothing to stop the rule-breaking

lobbying linked to MPs’ second jobs

(“Move out of parliament could clean

up MPs’ act”, Clare Foges, May 16). It

would not energise complacent MPs

with large majorities, deter lying in

parliament or guarantee that the

prime minister would enforce the

ministerial code. Even so, an urgent

decant of parliament is still necessary.

The risk of a disaster occurring in this

world heritage building increases

daily. A plan was drawn up by the

joint committee on the Palace of

Westminster in 2016 for a temporary

chamber that would have allowed

new ways of working, including a

“harmony-promoting semi-circular

design”. Foges says the latter would

lead to “dull, sludgy” politics, but

surely a good dose of harmony is

exactly what politics needs.

Tom Brake

Director, Unlock Democracy; Deputy

leader, House of Commons, 2012-15

Sir, None of Clare Foges’s options

seem realistic: the first, repairing the

buildings at a cost of £22 billion and

taking 76 years, is out of the question.

The second, of moving out of the

Sir, Nadhim Zahawi, the education

secretary, says that Oxbridge

admissions should be based on merit

alone (report, May 14; letters and

leading article, May 16). I agree. But

how does one define merit? He

attributes the disproportionate

number of Oxbridge admissions from

private schools to the “attainment gap”

between state and private sectors, and

highlights an initiative by Eton College

to open three state sixth forms in

Dudley, Middlesbrough and Oldham

to help pupils get into Oxbridge and

other leading universities. However,

there was scant mention of the many

outstanding state schools that exist up

and down the land and no mention at

all of the numerous sixth-formers in

the state sector who already reach

high levels of academic achievement.

Given that 93 per cent of the nation’s

children are state-educated, doesn’t

Mr Zahawi stop to wonder why private

school pupils make up about a third of

those at Oxbridge? One does not have

to be tribal (as he puts it) to think that

this is a bit odd.

Dr Janet Dobson

Dunnington, N Yorks

Admission on merit A-level resilience

from the times may 17, 1922

BRITISH LEAVE

CURRAGH

CAMP

PM’s work ethic

Sir, Boris Johnson says that he finds
working from home inefficient,
because he finds himself regularly
stopping work to walk very slowly to
the fridge to cut off a small piece of
cheese, then walks very slowly back
to his laptop and forgets what he was
working on (“WFH doesn’t work
because of cheese and coffee breaks,
says PM”, May 14). Surely this says
more about his attention span and
work ethic than it does about the
downside of home working.
Ian Aunger
Peterborough

thetimes.co.uk/archive

Put out to grass

Sir, Plastic lawns are indeed ecological

disasters (leading article, May 14). We

are lucky that our lawn is a remnant of

old, species-rich meadow; we maintain

it by mowing small areas, leaving the

majority to flower and set seed then

cutting these “hay patches” once in

autumn when the birds and voles have

eaten all the seeds. It gives us immense

pleasure to see the butterflies, bees

and many other insects it attracts.

Anyone with a little space can create a

wildlife-friendly lawn by planting

native grasses and flowers; far better

that than smothering the ground in

plastic or concrete.

Michael Boxall

Hepple, Northumberland

Protocol must be

observed by UK

Sir, Bruno Waterfield is right in his

analysis that “If Britain moves to

unilaterally override EU regulations

... that would be tantamount to an act
of aggression as well as a breach of a
treaty that was negotiated and ratified
by Britain only a few years ago”
(“Johnson defies warnings over
protocol”, May 16). Pacta sunt
servanda — treaties must be observed
— is a golden rule in all international
negotiations. The DUP regards the
Good Friday agreement as a
“capitulation” and wants a return to a
border sealing the six UK counties of
Ulster from the rest of Ireland. They
have a right to that position but the
people of Northern Ireland, as we saw
in the elections to the Northern
Ireland Assembly, do not share that
minority view. For more than a
century the extremist tail of Ulster
anti-Dublin nationalism has wagged
the dog of wider British interests. It is
time the prime minister told the DUP
that it can no longer impose its hard
line on the rest of the people who live
in the British Isles.
Denis Macshane
Former Europe minister, London SW1

The Curragh Camp was formally

handed over this morning at 10.30 to

the official IRA, and the green, white

and orange colours of the Irish

National flag are now flying from

the lofty water tower which stands

up so stark amidst the rolling fields

and low barrack buildings around it.

By reciprocal agreement, ceremonial

between the outgoing and incoming

troops was avoided, and the brief

programme was carried through

with rigidity and military precision.

Yet the proceedings were not

without a wistful dignity. An hour or

two before the appointed time the

bulk of the Leicester and Northants

Battalions had already marched

away across the rain-soaked Downs

to their entraining station, and we

were still many miles from the camp

when we passed the head of the long

motor transport column, which

rattled briskly along, the lorries gaily

decorated with Union Jacks, the

Royal Standard and French and

Belgian flags. Where a track strikes

across the Downs to Hare Camp, we

came upon Lieutenant-General

O’Connell, of the IRA and his two

staff officers. A few minutes later a

detachment of about 60 men of the

IRA came over a little hill 50 yards

off. General O’Connell put himself

at their head, and came down to the

broad camp road. As he rounded the

corner two British officers in trench

coats came up. There were no

salutes on either side. The party

moved forward with General

O’Connell and Lieutenant-Colonel

Sir F N Elphinstone-Dalrymple in

front and their ADCs a pace or two

behind, as the incoming Irish guard

took up seatry duty on the posts

vacated a minute before by the

British sentry. After nearly 70 years,

during which the camp had grown to

the third only in size to Aldershot

and Salisbury Plain, the Curragh had

passed out of British hands. With the

departure of the British troops the

forced restraint was relaxed. Knots

of men gathered to hear a Minister

of the Provisional Government

recall how, barely a year ago, he and

two officers of today’s incoming

Carlow unit had arrived in that same

camp as prisoners chained to the

sides of British motor lorries. If

regret was naturally uppermost, one

had seen and heard enough to

perceive that the IRA intended in

time to make the Curragh not

unworthy of its military past.