The Sun has no excuse for publishing its story about Ben Stokes’s family

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England’s Ben Stokes during celebrations back in July (Reuters)

Madeline Palacz’s article “Ben Stokes deserves our sympathy, but The Sun had every right to run their story” glosses over a number of important details in its defence of The Sun’s decision to publish personal and sensitive details relating to Ben Stokes’s family background.

Palacz makes no reference to the total disregard The Sun’s coverage showed in respect of domestic violence reporting guidelines, which were designed by feminist advocacy organisation Level UP, and supported by Hacked Off, to protect the dignity of deceased victims and ensure perpetrators are treated fairly under the law. Those guidelines highlight, for example, the dangers of giving perpetrators “positive character references” – yet the killer is described by a “family source” in The Sun as a “popular, easy-going guy”.

Palacz also makes no reference to the fact that Stokes has alleged “serious inaccuracies” in The Sun’s coverage.

On the question of the decision to publish the article, Palacz writes: “A proper balancing exercise must be undertaken between the respective rights which are at play in cases such as the Stokes article”. We would be inclined to agree. But what weighting was given to the rights of Ben Stokes and his family, and victims of domestic abuse everywhere, when The Sun elected to publish this piece of cruel, intrusive and dangerous journalism?

Nathan Sparkes

Policy Manager, Hacked Off

Pocket money

Those of us who lived through the financial crisis understand the risks of excessive spending and borrowing. But it’s not enough to encourage responsibility among adults; we have to teach children how money works early on.

Financial literacy has been on the national curriculum for five years, but we still have a long way to go. Lessons still focus on physical cash rather than on cashless alternatives. There would be an outcry if children were taught to use typewriters rather than computers in IT classes, so why are we allowing the same to happen with money?

To make matters worse – and without dismissing many teachers’ fantastic efforts – financial literacy is often squeezed out of crammed timetables. And when lessons do take place, it seems they are often taught in a dry, academic style that has nothing to do with the experience of money beyond the school gates.

In a world where money can be spent more easily than ever, failing to teach children how to handle it properly is, frankly, dangerous.

Clint Wilson

Founder, nimbl

Be careful what you vote for

On the BBC this morning, Tony Blair likened referenda to a sort of “retail politics”, similar to the sort of pronouncements made during election campaigns that invite binary responses. However, when governments attempt to put the resulting policies into action, the results are rarely as simple as initially proposed. This is the reason we have a Parliamentary Democracy and not one governed by referenda.

An example would be if we were to hold a referendum on proposing Income Tax Cuts For All. It would, I suspect, attract a large majority in favour; however, when looking at such a proposal in detail, it becomes clear that under such a scheme, the rich would benefit more than the poor, and the reduced tax take could seriously affect funding for health and education, which could outweigh any benefit from reduced income taxes. For this reason we should not be implementing the result of our Brexit referendum without any regard to the consequences.

Geoff Forward
Stirling

A step too far

I’m a firm Remainer in a Tory constituency. Labour never does well here. Many Brexit voters would probably call me an anti-democratic, middle-class “enemy of the people” because I badly want a second EU referendum.

But when a general election comes, if I find myself voting Lib Dem, it will be with a heavy heart. It’s obvious that to revoke Article 50 without seeking public opinion (as they say they will “on day one” if they win a parliamentary majority) is even more undemocratic than the flawed referendum of 2016. It will do nothing to heal this country’s massive divisions.

At least a Remain outcome from a People’s Vote could legitimately be called the will of the people.

Patrick Cosgrove
Shropshire

Across the Irish sea

The Department of Transport is 100 per cent right to be conducting a study into a fixed link to join Belfast to the United Kingdom mainland. Post-Brexit, expanding our infrastructure will be a matter of urgency to reassure and encourage inward investors – and indeed to sustain the United Kingdom.

That means HS2 needs to be extended not just to Glasgow and Edinburgh but to Belfast. That would be a boon for rail freight, as goods would be loaded onto freight trains at Belfast bound direct for continental Europe. The port of Belfast would also increase in strategic importance in terms of transatlantic trade.

John Barstow
West Sussex

What good old days?

Charlotte Cripps sweetly confides that she doesn’t “have the money to send her [child] to Queen’s Gate, in South Kensington, a fee-paying school where my parents sent me, in the days before fee-paying education had become so elitist”. When, exactly, were those days? I only ask because, at my age and having only been state-educated, I can be so forgetful and worry I may have missed a century or several.

Beryl Wall
London