You can almost admire Boris Johnson’s cunning over the national insurance increase

It’s not a great surprise to learn that Boris Johnson has come up with a plan that will persuade the electorate that he’s increasing funding for the NHS while also appeasing the backbench Tories who are concerned about breaking manifesto pledges, and at the same time not taking too much from his wealthy supporters. You could almost admire his cunning.

He’s gone so far as to have older employed people starting to pay the increased rate of national insurance. But it seems that he doesn’t grasp the point that in choosing which people should be protected from payment increases, it’s not age or employment status that matter but poverty.

Or perhaps he does understand that but doesn’t care.

Susan Alexander

Gloucestershire

Reading through the excellent article from Adam Forrest, only one thought came into my mind: will any of them be contributing to the funds required for social care reform? I wonder.

Robert Boston

Kent

As a retired person enjoying relatively good health, I am more than willing to pay higher taxes in order to contribute to improved health, social care, education and other essential services that make for a fairer society. To raise funds through an increase in national insurance contributions is weighted against the young and clearly unfair. This is a view held by most people of my age that I know.

There is a rub, however. The avoidance of tax by those far wealthier than myself, in order that they can look after their own whilst indulging themselves in ways beyond the dreams of the majority, is actively supported by a government that is more representative of this minority than the rest of us.

Instead of having an eye on what can be done to secure re-election, the government would be well-advised to present a compelling and fair vision for the future that appeals to the electorate’s sense of collective responsibility rather than the self-centredness so clearly modelled by the current government.

Graham Powell

Cirencester, Gloucestershire

I read Caroline Lucas’s column with interest and agreement. As she rightly states, this is a subversive attack on our democratic right to vote. Elections are often marred by voter lethargy, with poor turnouts. People feel, rightly perhaps, that nothing will really change for the better.

But the government’s manipulation of this mindset is shameful because to use a sledgehammer to crack a practically non-existent criminal nut by introducing voter ID will inevitably drive down voting numbers even further.

It is extremely worrying, too, about political campaigning and the right of ministers to curtail this democratic and necessary function. This is nominally supposed to be a freedom-loving government with a libertarian prime minister at the helm but it appears to be fast-tracking into authoritarian territory, which entirely negates its party’s inherent ethos. This wasn’t North Korea the last time I looked.

Judith A Daniels

Norfolk

That a Batley vicar who sexually abused a three-year-old has been jailed is just another horror in the exhausting stream of religious child abuse revelations.

What is worse is that the judge said: “You held yourself out as a man of God but you’re ... a hypocrite.” Why does that mean anything?

It is this very belief that religious affiliation is a hotline to morality that gives religions privileged stewardship of cherished civic events and allows churches to repeatedly mark their own homework.

Neil Barber

Edinburgh Secular Society