The article based on an interview with Kenneth Branagh’s cousin ended with a touching remembrance of his ethnically cleansed Catholic neighbours, his final comment being “Northern Ireland can be a great place if they’d just leave us alone” (“‘I grew up with Branagh in Belfast: our childhoods haunt his new film’”, News). That is the kind of sentiment often heard from this country that sounds significant but is actually meaningless. Who is “they” and who is “us”? Was it all someone else’s fault? The “they” who put his Catholic neighbours out were his fellow Northern Irish Protestants. As the article makes clear, some of those Protestants could have in their turn been put out by Catholics.
Notwithstanding the involvement of the British army, indigenous tit-for-tat violence was at the core of the Troubles and the reason it went on for so long. If “they” implies some outside influence, it was only the intervention of British, Irish and US politicians in support of home-grown peacemakers that eventually ended the Troubles in 1998. Northern Ireland can be a “great wee place” (as the saying goes) but only if we Northern Irish make it so. There is no “they”.
Stephen Butcher
Tullaghgarley, Ballymena, Co Antrim
Unions make work better
I’ve found that the worst workplaces for backstabbing and destructive forms of competitiveness are those where a trade union is weak or non-existent (“Are you a jerk at work?”, Magazine). A strong workplace union with a good union rep is still the best defence against malpractice, whether from colleagues or the boss. Working atmospheres improve dramatically where grievances are aired and taken forward collectively. People are then less likely to blame and undermine each other for things that are really the employer’s or government’s fault. If you’re being bullied or discriminated against, there’s someone who can provide advice and effective support.
So join a union and get involved in the fight for a better deal. It could improve your workplace relationships no end.
Lin Clark
Bristol
Don’t ignore Wales, Labour
The interview with the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting (New Review) was interesting, but his dismissal of “the left” as “a bunch of people who were relatively recent joiners to the Labour party who didn’t understand its history or traditions or how you win elections” reveals his woeful (or wilful?) ignorance of politics outside England. He seems unaware that the Labour party in Wales has proved very successful in winning elections while adopting leftwing policies and viewpoints. There has been a Labour government in Wales since devolution.
It is disappointing yet again for a senior English Labour politician to dismiss what has happened and is happening elsewhere in the UK, one reason why Welsh Labour party members increasingly feel the UK party is out of touch with them and their country. Such views are aiding the growing calls for independence, which, if achieved, would ensure perpetual Conservative governments in England. The Labour leadership in England would do well to think on this.
Melanie Lloyd
Three Crosses, Swansea
Call that a success?
In your critical survey of Boris Johnson’s claims of success on Covid and other issues (“We got the big calls right”, News), you rather downplayed the crucial point in relation to his purported Covid “success” – the number of Covid-related deaths, which are higher than any other country in Europe. Even today, although France has many more daily Covid cases, its daily death rate is still surpassed by the UK.
Yes, the UK got off the mark quickly with the vaccination programme, which should have been a way of keeping our Covid deaths low, but this lead was frittered away by all the other mistakes the government made, some of which are detailed in your article. Journalists should be hitting Johnson with this fact, and the related statistics, at every opportunity, not letting him get away with his spurious Covid “success” claims.
Carl Gardner
London EC1
Child-free by choice
My thanks and support to Holly Williams for her clear, sensible analysis of whether or not to have children (“Why assume it’s a problem if a woman is child-free at thirty?”, Comment).
I’m in my late 70s and among my friends are eight older women who, like me, have no children by choice. Only two have never been in a long partnership or marriage. We are happy with our choice, made for a range of reasons. We’re not selfish, child-haters, lonely or weird. We just have chosen not to have children.
Paula Jones
London SW20
Punishment without care
Thank you, Nick Cohen, for your article on the disgrace that is the prison system in the UK (“How many more Charlie Todds must there be before our prison system is reformed?”, Comment).
The way in which those in custody are treated, at whatever stage in their judicial process, is a stain on our society. Severe overcrowding and the self-defeating effect of short sentencing exacerbate the problem and vastly more could be done in the fields of education and training.
Having volunteered for 10 years as a teaching assistant in a London prison, a role that Covid has made impossible with the abandonment of class teaching and 23-hour confinement, I have seen how dedicated, compassionate and expert educators have struggled in the wake of the pitiful lack of resources and managerial imagination to offer the teaching and personal support that can make such a difference to an inmate’s prison life and future after release.
It is highly regrettable that so much prison education is provided by private companies that are more concerned with getting paid for filling seats and ticking boxes than for providing opportunities for inmates. It is high time that the public recognised the stupidity and the human and financial cost of our self-perpetuating blunt regime of punishment without care or vision.
Steve St Clair
Potters Bar, Hertfordshire
The insightful article by Nick Cohen makes the point that the prison service is an unpopular posting for civil servants. It is, too, low in the estimation of politicians. Since the general election of 2010, there have been no fewer than eight ministers of justice.
The incumbent reportedly had to be bribed with the mantle of deputy prime minister before he would take the job. In that time, there have been even more prisons ministers, some of whom have shown signs of understanding the need for major reform, but have not stayed in post long enough to do anything about it. The prison service is conspicuously lacking in stability and political leadership, and the chronic state of our prisons reflects this.
Gordon Cropper
Barnet
Look east for the setting sun
While I agree with the selection of the 10 places in the UK to make the most of a spectacular sunset (“The sky’s the limit”, Magazine), readers may be tempted to visit Hunstanton on the north Norfolk coast whose beach surprisingly faces west and therefore offers many glorious sunsets.
Toby Wood
Peterborough
