Letters: With no Coalition, Osborne has no conscience

In bringing in tax cuts for the middle classes while cutting welfare benefits, George Osborne has been criticised for having “lost his touch”.

It is not his touch that he has lost; it is his Liberal Democrat conscience. During the Coalition, Osborne had to get his Budgets agreed with Lib Dem ministers, who would have fought against an unequal package of measures like this latest Budget.

Now Osborne is displaying himself as the Conservative he is, reinforced by his need to please the Tory right wing, most of whom are Eurosceptic.

Coalition leads to moderate, centrist measures; one-party government gives the influence to the extreme wing of the ruling party.

Alison L Willott

Tregare, Monmouth

For many years some dental undergraduates, and some in other disciplines, have had the opportunity to gain experience, through mock-ups, in the problems encountered by people who live with certain disabilities.

Examples include completing an application form wearing their prescription spectacles with lenses coated with petroleum jelly, illustrating one visual problem;

for mobility difficulties: the restrictions arising from confinement to a wheelchair while moving around the campus.

However, nothing can replicate living with a serious disability 24 hours a day.

George Osborne and other sceptic MPs need to discover the importance of quality support, financial and practical, to live with a serious impairment.

Readers might like to make suggestions for a 24-hour “impediment” for these politicians to live with and to appreciate handicapping conditions personally.

Peter Erridge

East Grinstead

In any other context, prior to 2010, divisions in the governing party, the resignation of a Cabinet minister, and a majority of only 12 would lead to calls for a general election, or a change of Tory leader at the very least.

We have been led down a path by the dangerous “five-year terms” legislation to dictatorship by illegitimate groups of MPs, unaccountable also to an ineffective opposition, who appear to be able to continue to “rule” without any sense of the anger and disconnection that their actions create in the general population.

John Evans

Pulborough, West Sussex

I think the most unbelievable of Damascene conversions simply never took place. If Nadine Dorries can be taken at her word, IDS begged, threatened and pleaded with her to change her mind and vote for what he vehemently claimed to be “his bill”, and this surely chimes with our perception of the man’s political leanings. Friend of the downtrodden? Leave it out.

If this is an accurate recollection of the encounter, then the reason given by the Work and Pensions Secretary for his resignation looks 180 degrees out of kilter with the truth. In the way things usually turn out, his real motive for walking away will perhaps soon emerge.

Eddie Dougall

Walsham-le-Willows, Suffolk

The Chancellor’s Budget demonstrated that the Government has decisively turned its back on one-nation Conservatism and sold its soul to the “have yachts”.

Ivor Morgan

Lincoln

IDS resigns, citing the pair’s callous and unjust approach to benefit changes. Our conclusion is that IDS is a nice man, Cameron and Osborne are nasty. That nice Mr Duncan Smith is in favour of Brexit, unlike those Bullingdon bounders who are in favour of staying in. Therefore, when it comes to the EU referendum, it is clear which way reasonable and caring people should cast their vote.

Funny, in the past I never had IDS down as a benevolent, Robin Hood-like defender of the poor and needy. Didn’t many of the draconian changes emanate from his department, with his apparent blessing? Isn’t this just an obvious political ploy: retain the initiative in the referendum campaign, embarrass your opponents and blacken the public’s view of them? Or have I just been watching too many episodes of House of Cards and Scandal?

M T Harris

Waltham, Lincolnshire

Does Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation mean we can keep benefits for the disabled and abolish George Osborne?

Kim Thonger

Rushden, Northamptonshire

As I walk around our lovely countryside, I am often troubled by the amount of litter, dropped in even the most remote places. Takeaway bags, cups, polystyrene trays and drinks cans are strewn over our local moorland and fields.

As an individual, I do my best to pick up what I can, to dispose of it in our own bin at home, but feel that I am fighting a losing battle. So I was interested by environment minister Rory Stewart’s suggestion that paper cups might be taxed.

I suggest that, as it is not just paper cups that are causing litter problems, an appropriate solution would be to swap the tax currently charged on eating in at establishments to fall instead on take-out facilities.

If more people ate their food in restaurants, pubs and cafés, rather than taking it away, less litter of all kinds would be produced. Also, more jobs would be created to serve the people who are eating and drinking in these establishments. It’s a win-win solution.

Liz White

Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

Emilie Lamplough suggests (letter, 19 March) that maths teaching should be made more relevant.

However, last summer, there was a news item about a maths exam question involving probability and a bag of sweets. One comment on the website for this newspaper was from a student who complained that maths was hard enough without examiners trying to make the problems relevant to the real world.

I found maths interesting in its own right, and still enjoy maths the way I enjoy a piece of music. I recall being taught about imaginary numbers at school, and they proved not relevant to anything until I was doing a physics degree, where they turned up in both the study of alternating electric currents and quantum mechanics. And 100 years ago who would have known that the study of prime numbers would play an important part in encryption for e-commerce?

Conversely, I failed O-level French, despite immediately seeing how useful knowing a foreign language could be. It wasn’t the teaching – the rest of my class passed. I just have no aptitude for languages, the way that some people have no aptitude for maths.

There may not be a solution to the problem. Indeed, one thing maths has taught me is that it is possible to have a problem to which there is no solution.

Paul Dormer

Guildford

Dave Haskell (letter, 19 March) says that it would be a simple Christian act to transfer money from the overseas aid budget instead of cutting the disability budget. No, it would be better to keep higher income-tax thresholds and corporation tax as they are and give the money saved to the disability budget. It’s more Christian to stop the rich getting richer than to deprive poor communities in the Third World.

Stuart Gregson

Alton, Hampshire

No, Dave Haskell, I do not think Jesus would have advocated taking money from those who have absolutely nothing (overseas aid budget) to give money (disability allowance) to those who probably have a roof over their heads and access to food and welfare.

Charity does not begin at home, it begins in the area of greatest need.

Brian Dalton

Sheffield

While I applaud everyone’s efforts to analyse the grammar of the student’s eggs/bacon/beans request, your correspondents are neglecting the initial opening to the conversation. I wonder, was it “How may I help you?” or “What would you like?” No, I fear it was probably the question that never receives the answer it warrants: The ubiquitous “Are you all right there?”

Geoff Dougherty

Little Sutton, Cheshire

Irrespective of the phraseology used by the student in ordering his eggs, the response of the server would inevitably have been: “Absolutely.”

Dougal Dixon

Wareham, Dorset

I enjoyed John Walsh’s piece on mermaids (“How the whole world went mad for mermaids”, Radar, 19 March). However, he omitted the well-known statement made by a mermaid, that she actually preferred to lie on the beach but her other half preferred to go in the water.

David Hasell

Thames Ditton, Surrey