Boris Johnson can’t be trusted with our money

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Boris Johnson is increasing national insurance contributions to pay for social care (AFP via Getty)

I wholeheartedly agree with Mary Dejevsky’s fine piece regarding “generational warriors”.

As a semi-retired 70-year-old, I accept that my state pension is funded by the previous  generation of workers, in the same way that I am funding my children’s state pension. Ever was it thus.

The current arguments around Johnson’s tax rises and the shabby way he has gone about their implementation should actually focus on his total lack of a plan for improving the NHS or social care. All he’s done is to say he is raising a huge sum of money.

He must be held accountable. His record of dispensing financial largesse around his chums should put us all on notice that these vast sums of our money aren’t safe in his hands.

Richard Smith

Rugby

Labour needs proportional representation

I note John Rentoul’s view that Labour’s poll lead alters the assertion Keir Starmer can’t win.

The “elephant in the room”, which is the real blocker to Labour returning to power, is their inability to win seats in Scotland. Labour hold one of 59 seats with no sign of any progress in the polls. Add the proposed boundary changes and Labour’s prospects continue to look bleak.

Electoral reform will be discussed at the Labour Party conference. Maybe now is the time for Labour to remove the first-past-the-post blinkers and embrace fairness and a system where all votes matter?

Paul Dickson

Peebles, Scottish Borders

Stop pussyfooting around anti-vaxxers

Why is the government so reluctant to give a clear lead on vaccination? We have national speed limits on the roads, not to protect drivers but to protect the public from drivers. In a modern car, anyone can drive at 100mph. No one objects to not being allowed to do so and no one suggests that not being allowed to drive at 100mph deprives us of our human rights.

Why, then, should the right to put others at risk of infection suddenly be a human right?

We all live in the shadow of Covid. For all of us, more jabs mean more protection. We owe this to one another. Let employers take the lead in this and, for the sake of us all, stop pussyfooting around the anti-vaxxers.

John Owens

Llannefydd, Wales

Compassion for refugees is needed

Close your eyes. Imagine that you, your loved ones and 10 other strangers are crammed into a small inflatable boat designed for four people. Your children cannot swim. There are huge vessels ploughing up and down the traffic lanes who cannot see you, and cannot manoeuvre to miss you if they do. The border patrols will try to turn you back. Dinghies capsize easily, especially when overloaded.

Who will find you in the dark? What will happen to the babies and toddlers with no or poorly-fitting life vests?

I have sailed the Atlantic, I have been in a dinghy in inshore waters that capsized. We have done so much less than our European neighbours to accommodate people displaced by wars and poverty of our making. Let’s have some pity.

Anne Robson

Wiltshire

Callous contempt

Priti Patel is fulfilling her role as home secretary in the wrong century and the wrong country. She would have been ideally suited to the role of minister of the interior under apartheid in South Africa.

The callous contempt she is showing for human life and international law is in my experience equalled only by the vicious apartheid ideologists who performed that murderous role in the 1970s and 1980s.

The bitter irony, of course, is that Patel’s parents were immigrants to Britain.

D Maughan Brown

York