Letters: Suella Braverman has exposed a PM out of step with the people he governs

SIR – I support every word in Suella Braverman’s excoriating resignation letter to Rishi Sunak (telegraph.co.uk, November 14). 

Under Mr Sunak, the Conservatives have shown themselves to be unwilling to meet the aspirations of those who elected them in 2019. 

Phil Coutie
Exeter, Devon

SIR – Mrs Braverman’s devastating resignation letter to the Prime Minister exposes him as untrustworthy, unreliable, underhanded and unprofessional – as well as unelected. 

Voters will, no doubt, view him as an undesirable choice to lead the country in future.

Lt Col Jonathan Sharp (retd)
Torquay, Devon

SIR – Mrs Braverman doesn’t know when to stop. Her letter of resignation, while containing relevant points on the dire state of this country, does nothing for cohesion in the Tory party. She should have waited before putting pen to paper.

Penny Adie
Morebath, Devon

SIR – I am yet to hear from a person who had stopped supporting the Conservatives but will now do so again following the appointment of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary and the sacking of Suella Braverman (Letters, November 14). I suspect I will be waiting a long time.

Christopher Hunt 
Swanley, Kent 

SIR – The welcome appointment of Lord Cameron as Foreign Secretary has, of course, given the Right wing of the Tory party another opportunity to moan. What a discredited bunch they are, claiming that they represent true Tory voters and are the real patriots standing up for British values. 

If they really cared about the country they would stop their endless carping and get behind the Government to help surmount all the problems that we are facing. 

Elisabeth Blake
Fareham, Hampshire

SIR – I am sure Lord Cameron will make an excellent Foreign Secretary. 

That said, following the significant defence cuts that were made in 2010 under his leadership, we now live in a far more dangerous world. I hope he will become an advocate for a more appropriate balance between hard and soft power.

Rear Admiral Philip Mathias (retd)
Southsea, Hampshire

SIR – As a Leeds United supporter I see Lord Cameron’s appointment as similar to that of Sam Allardyce at my club near the end of last season. Both are yesterday’s men, brought in to save a sinking ship. Leeds were relegated to the Championship and the Tories will be relegated to the Opposition.

Michael Woolman
Leeds, West Yorkshire

Liberty and violence

SIR – Lord Frost (Comment, November 10) describes the current tendency to confuse freedom of thought with the freedom to mount demonstrations advocating violent action.

He illustrates a paradox examined by Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies, namely that the attainment of true liberty requires the acceptance of certain restraints on social behaviour. This is a matter that should not separate the Left from the Right: both will lose if expressions of violent extremism are allowed free rein – on Armistice Day or at any other time. 

The vacuousness of bien-pensant attitudes on this issue, on both sides of the political divide, is alarming.

M St John Parker
Bampton, Oxfordshire

SIR – Last weekend, every event – the Lord Mayor’s Show, the protest attended by 300,000 marchers and the moving ceremony at the Cenotaph – was impeccably policed, in spite of the incendiary remarks of the former home secretary, which may have inspired violence by Right-wing thugs. 

We are lucky to live in a democracy where the police can show their skill, dedication and, above all, their independence – and I hope they realise that the public are extremely grateful.

Dame Esther Rantzen
Lyndhurst, Hampshire
 

Heat-pump happiness 

SIR – As a contented owner of a heat pump, I was surprised by your report (November 13) on how noisy they are. 

We took out our oil-fired boiler two years ago and replaced it with a heat pump. It is far quieter than the boiler, and is outdoors, giving us more indoor space. It makes less noise than any petrol or diesel car I’ve ever heard. 

We have just had our two cosiest winters ever, with lower bills, even compared to before the energy crisis. 

Jill Bruce
Colchester, Essex
 

Smokeless pipe

SIR – My father served in the RAF from 1938 to 1976. In the war he was a Lancaster bomber pilot and, like most of his generation, smoked cigarettes (Letters, November 14). Still flying in the 1960s, and following advice from a doctor, he gave up cigarettes and moved to the healthier option of a pipe.

Following retirement and the NHS messages that smoking was bad, he continued to use a pipe but didn’t fill it with tobacco. He found that sucking on an empty pipe helped concentration, especially when doing the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword.

He gave up entirely when his last pipe broke. We offered to buy him a new one, but he maintained it wouldn’t taste the same as one that had been smoked through.

Malcolm Sweeney
Stockton-on-Tees, Co Durham

SIR – My father, a proud Scotsman and lifelong pipe smoker, always kept two pipes in his pocket: a small one used daily for modest filling with Erinmore or similar, and another – more than twice the size – for when offered “a fill” by friends. 

He’d always return the larger pipe once filled to his pocket, saying he’d smoke that later, but instead cunningly used that tobacco for recharging his smaller pipe. I don’t know how he managed to keep so many friends.

Alastair Pringle
Benenden, Kent

SIR – My late father smoked a pipe as a teenager. He and his friends could not always afford tobacco, so substituted string. In adulthood he didn’t smoke.

Nick Greatorex
Kingston Blount, Oxfordshire

NHS diversity roles

SIR – You report (“NHS chiefs told to cut woke roles as diversity tsars still cost £13m a year”, November 12) that a source close to Steve Barclay – at that time the health secretary – said “resources would be better spent on practical steps to address health inequalities for the benefit of patients”. 

The fact is that equality, diversity and inclusion roles in the NHS play a pivotal part in addressing the impact of health disparities – that, for instance, black men were three times more likely to die than their white counterparts in the early stages of the pandemic. 

These roles shine a much-needed spotlight on the imbalances in services that patients may experience because of their age, gender or disability. Study after study has shown that patients receive better care and outcomes when their healthcare providers understand their cultural backgrounds, personal beliefs and unique needs.

Given that this sector has relatively few managers compared with the wider UK workforce, it is time politicians and their teams stopped criticising these key roles, which benefit both staff and patients.

Sir Julian Hartley
Chief executive, NHS Providers
London SW1

Airline extras

SIR – Nigel Stembridge (Letters, November 11) is right: it is easy to avoid extra fees on budget airlines if you are going away for a few days. But the same is not true if you live on an island and visit relatives in Britain for Christmas.

In my case, there are no direct flights at this time of year, so flying with a low-cost airline necessitates a stopover in Barcelona. While the round-trip fare is reasonable, one 20kg suitcase adds €300; extra leg-room seats (as my husband is tall) would be €120, and cabin luggage costs €25 each per case per leg – a total of €620 (about £540). It is cheaper for us to fly business class with Iberia and BA. We’ll even have space for presents.

Jane Eyles
Mahon, Menorca, Spain
 

Canine cunning

SIR – Can anyone tell me how Basil, my Jack Russell-dachshund cross, when left alone with a 600g sealed box of Quality Street, managed neatly to remove the sticky tape, take the lid off and help himself to a variety of chocolates? 

He was not too happy later in the evening.

Helen Cann
Poundbury, Dorset

When epic films become an endurance test

SIR – I watched two films at the cinema this year and enjoyed both. 

However, I question whether it is really necessary for a film to last as long as three hours. Oppenheimer is three hours, while Killers of the Flower Moon is a staggering three hours and 26 minutes. This is too long to concentrate, too long for me to sit still, and too long for my bladder. 

When there is endless “fill” in the film, such as the fire scenes in Killers, my thoughts start to wander.

James Hare
Helmsley, North Yorkshire

Benefits of human society at the supermarket 

SIR – Unlike Oliver Stewart (Letters, November 13), I dislike self-service tills, preferring to deal with people. I try not to delay those behind me in the queue by taking too long to pack my bag or chatting.

Funnily enough, in one of my usual supermarkets, the queue for the self-service tills has recently been much longer than that for the manned ones.

Gill Clark
Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire

SIR – I live in Midhurst, a small Sussex town, and we have a local Sainsbury’s with both manned checkout counters and self-checkout stations.

The other day, I watched an elderly couple shopping there. The lady was clearly suffering from dementia and was becoming increasingly distressed. Her husband, trying to cope with her and manage a large trolley, struggled with the task in hand. From nowhere a member of staff went up to the lady and, addressing her by name, chatted to until she was calmer, then helped her find her husband. They were obviously known in the shop.

While I was unloading my trolley at the checkout the couple came up behind me in the queue. The cashier on the till rang a bell and another member of staff came and helped the couple to unload the trolley, chatting to them all the while, then packing their shopping, carrying it to the car and unloading it into their boot. The kindness of the entire staff was exemplary. 

No machine could ever replicate the spontaneous acts of kindness, performed with grace and charm, that I witnessed in the shop that day.

Jane Taylor
Midhurst, West Sussex

SIR – Personally, I enjoy using Marks & Spencer’s excellent app. I choose the items I want, zap the bar code with my phone, put the goods in my bag, pay online and walk out of the store without even approaching any sort of till. I have a receipt on my phone but I’ve never had one checked by a member of staff. I can’t fault the system.

Campbell McLearnon
Bangor, Caernarfonshire

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