Our politicians are wasting food while some of us starve

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Perhaps our politicians could donate their next pay rise to those in need? (PA)

Isn’t it disgusting that at a time when many are in need and food banks are struggling to make a difference, a report comes out about the food waste generated by the catering facilities in the Houses of Parliament?

Remember, this is the place where MPs have subsidised meals; subsidies paid for by the very people they expect to accept a pay rise, which in reality is a significant pay cut. The same MPs who claim their fuel bills on their expenses. The same MPs who will probably give themselves a significant pay rise in due course. No wonder there are revolutions!

While it is a fact that our monarch cannot interfere with political decisions, it is worth noting the not-so-subtle messages in King Charles’s Christmas speech, and that he has made significant donations to charities trying to help those in need.

Would that the politicians listened. Perhaps they could donate their next pay rise to those who need it most?

Lisbeth Robertson

Orkney

Let’s not give Theresa May too much credit

I disagree with John Rentoul’s recent article regarding Theresa May’s predictions about the next election. May is a disastrous pollster.

Remember that she called an unnecessary election and lost her majority. She also suffered the biggest-ever poll defeat in the house.

Finally, remember she warmly backed Truss and welcomed her to her role. That’s all fairly damning to me.

Dale Hughes

Address supplied

It’s time for a Labour government

Between them, your correspondents John Murray and Susan Hunter catalogue many of the reasons why the party that has been in government for 12 years should neither be forgiven for its ill-advised, ineffective and callous policies, nor have those self-serving and corrupt practices that have brought this country to its knees been forgotten.

The sooner that the Conservative Party is removed from office and consigned to history the better. Unfortunately, we are obliged to wait until the government decides when it is in its best interest – and not the nation’s – to call an election.

Given a workable majority, I believe that a Labour government under Keir Starmer can begin to effect the changes, across all areas, that this nation has needed to address for a very long time. As a Labour supporter, the best way that I can make my vote count, in a constituency with a substantial Tory majority, is to do as reported by Adam Forrest and hope that many others do likewise.

With the desired result, a Labour Party supported in office by other left of centre parties might be even more likely to affect the electoral changes to which Starmer, in some sense understandably, is currently too cautious to commit.

Graham Powell

Cirencester

Fool us once

Theresa May predicts a win for the Tories at the next election despite their incompetence and the chaos they’ve caused which, as Sir Lindsay Hoyle says, has turned Britain into a laughing stock.

If she proves correct, a modification will be necessary to the famous saying attributed (perhaps incorrectly) to Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time – unless they’re British.”

Roger Hinds

Surrey

The universe doesn’t revolve around you

At the close of a year dominated by overactive egos, I begin to consider what my new year’s resolution might be.

I recall, many years ago, our deputy headteacher suggesting to us fifth-formers that we might seek to leave this world a little better for our passing through it. I’ll try for that one, being inspired also by Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish Renaissance polymath, who notably discovered that it is the sun – and not the earth – which is at the centre of our solar system.

2023 marks Copernicus’s 550th birthday. However, I feel sure his famous discovery led him to be content with his three score years and ten.

Reverend Peter Sharp

Chapel-en-le-Frith