Letters: Divorce

I was moved by Virginia Ironside's article "Divorce hurts – and it hurts the children most of all" (16 July). My parents separated in the early 1970s when I was five and, like Virginia, I was the only one in my class in that situation. My father had uncontested custody of me and my brother; as this made us even more unusual, social workers became involved. They did not help and only reinforced the message that we were indeed an odd "family".

My parents were bitter. When my brother and I showed delight at going to mum's for a holiday, dad snarled, "You're only happy 'cos you're going to see your mam." Mum was equally scathing about dad. Our childhood was most definitely adversely affected.

Now I cringe when I hear separating parents saying how resilient children are, how they cope really well, that they have two homes now instead of one, and all the other drivel that assuages their guilt.

The new initiative, Kids in the Middle, is admirable, but I wonder if more funds should tackle helping parents to stay together, or to work out why so many marriages are breaking down.

Angela Elliott

Welton le Marsh, Lincolnshire

It is great to read about Kids in the Middle, and that so many are co-operating to highlight the needs of children experiencing separation and divorce. It addresses a truly urgent need.

But, given that prevention is better than cure, would it not be wise to also push for greater resources to be channelled to those organisations – many voluntary – that are involved in relationship education and are passing on the knowledge and skills that will help couples to live together well from the very beginning of their relationship. The Government spends a pittance on this provision by comparison with the huge sums it spends on the far more difficult business of picking up the pieces when things are broken.

Why put a fleet of ambulances at the bottom of the cliff and pay scant attention to building a fence at the top?

Colm Black

Inverness

National service canbolster democracy

Deborah Orr is right to say that calls for the reintroduction of national service constitute "the germ of an idea that needs to be seriously examined" (Opinion, 16 July). But she is wrong when she says that bringing back national service is a "conservative" position.

There are two kinds of armies, conscript and professional. The former, based on the duty of the citizen to serve, is by its nature much more democratic. It is also much more able to forge a sense of national identity and social purpose. Conscript armies are drawn from all sections of society; the middle-class woman has to work with the working-class man.

Professional armies, by contrast, are drawn from narrow social pools, consisting of people at the very top (officers) and people at the very bottom (squaddies). The middle-classes are under-represented, because they will usually choose civvy street over professional soldiering.

Nations with conscript armies are far less likely to get involved in pointless wars to satisfy the foolish egotism of their political leaders. It is hard to imagine that the war in Iraq would have been tolerated for a single day had the sons and daughters of middle-class MPs been asked to fight it.

The Germans had a professional army until 1945. Born out of the Prussian military ethos of the 19th century, this army exercised such malign influence within German society and politics that it was rightly called "a state within a state" by the time of the First World War. Hitler's defeat destroyed it once and for all, and in the 1950s the West Germans set about building a citizen army that has since played an important part in the larger process of building German democracy.

That democracy is now among the strongest in the world, Germany shows far fewer signs of social disintegration than Britain and the country doesn't allow its politicians to embark on absurd military adventures.

Peter Lyth

Southwell, Nottinghamshire

Does Deborah Orr really want the young sons of her friends and relatives to be forcibly exposed to the harsh realities of national-service training in the UK, or the even harsher realities of killing on foreign fields? Didn't think so. Interesting notion, though, being given guns in order to avoid using knives.

Martin Folan

London N22

The headline over Deborah Orr's article stating that national service would give pride to the young is one of those commonly held fallacies that everybody knows is correct but for which there is little or no proof.

I was one of the last to be called up for national service in the UK and served in a light infantry regiment for the statutory two years.

I had had a rugged childhood, living in run-down rented accommodation with no father. Yet I found national service did me no good at all. It taught me to curse and blaspheme. I quickly learned to "skive" work. I became lazy, foul-mouthed and coarse.

On demob, I went back to the good job I had before call-up, but was unable to settle, so left. It was several years before I was able to shake off the problems that national service had created for me.

Steve Manning

Nantwich, Cheshire

Obama doesn't need 'special relationship'

Adrian Hamilton's Opinion (17 July) about the advice on the Middle East that we should be offering to Barack Obama when he visits the UK is simply an extension of our outworn "favoured friend" policy towards the US.

Mr Hamilton says that we should be saying, "We can help you in this in a way that no other country can". But that's just what we've been doing through eight ghastly years of the Bush-Cheney administration and look where it has got us all.

If Barack Obama wants to forge the fresh, outgoing commitment to the future that we all hope for, it is only logical that he should listen to the countries that had the sense to take a principled stand against the whole Middle East debacle.

The Republicans make play with Obama's supposed naivety in foreign affairs, ignoring the fact that he majored at Columbia University in political science, specialising in international relations. Given his international background, his resilience and his obvious intellectual gifts, the last thing that the senator needs is advice from the UK about foreign affairs.

Mary Rose Gliksten

Windsor, Berkshire

The collapse of the recent US/UK initiative to punish Zimbabwe with further United Nations Security Council sanctions, brought about by Chinese and Russian vetoes, is symptomatic of Washington's waning political, economic and military power.

What a far cry from the days when Madeleine Albright, as Secretary of State, could boast, perhaps too dismissively, that the UN Security Council was merely "an instrument of American foreign policy".

Dave Diss

Glengowrie, South Australia

Tax changes on empty properties

The Government's abandonment of business-rates relief on empty property was ill-conceived and has turned out to have been poorly timed. Nevertheless, the suggestion ("Property sector hit by tax changes", 7 July) that the increasing levels of vacancy will further swell Treasury coffers is founded on misunderstanding. Even ignoring the falls in other taxes, it would seem unlikely that total receipts of business rates will rise in these circumstances.

Under the current regime, any increase in rates revenues from owners of vacant properties will be offset by the loss in revenues from the erstwhile and intended occupiers of the same properties.

Moreover, as a practising rating surveyor, it is apparent to me that a great many more strategies for rates mitigation and avoidance are open to owners of vacant commercial property than to property occupiers.

One might reasonably predict, therefore, that overall revenues from business rates tend to decline with increasing levels of vacancy, leading to a greater proportion of rates liability residing with landlords as opposed to occupiers. No doubt a study to confirm this thesis could keep a team of academics gainfully employed for several months; good news for some in these uncertain times.

Simon Wanderer

Manchester

How to share out tips more fairly

Your campaign against minimum wage abuses in the balance of wages, tips and service charges is timely and just, but it is worth mentioning that a recent definition created by the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) helps address one aspect of the problem involving the Tronc system.

In a recent judgement, the tribunal ruled that tips, gratuities, service or cover charges are not to be included in minimum-wage calculations when the contributions are not paid directly through the employer's payroll. This refers to bars and restaurants that distribute tips to staff through a Tronc system, where the gratuities are passed directly to a member of staff, a "Troncmaster", who shares the money out to colleagues.

The employers argued that the payments were provided direct from the employers, but the EAT judged that, as the Tronc funds were not the employer's funds and they had no control over allocation, those funds were not the employer's property and so could not be counted in any national minimum-wage calculations.

This is one small step towards clarifying the destination of a customer's tip, but it can easily be avoided by the employer running the Tronc system through their payroll. The judgement helps, but the time for clarification and transparency in service charges is long overdue.

Tony Hogarth-Smith

Wiggonholt, West Sussex

The wording of "service charge" is wrong; it is surely a voluntary gratuity, payable or not and entirely up to the customer.

What should also be outlawed is the automatic inclusion of this on the bill – and the even dodgier practice of adding it and also leaving a blank space on the credit-card bill in the hope the customer will not notice and add a further 10 per cent, thereby paying it twice over.

Nigel Cubbage

Merstham, Surrey

Entrance tests favour private-school pupils

You report that some universities are to shun A-levels in favour of their own admissions tests (17 July). Such entrance exams will give private-school pupils yet another advantage over state-school pupils in winning places at the better universities. Private schools have both the resources and the time to train the pupils to pass these exams.

Espen Eie Bowen

Swansea

One could be forgiven for thinking that A-levels are for attractive young ladies only. I can't ever remember seeing a photo at this time of year showing a young man (attractive or otherwise) opening his results envelope.

Graham Hines

Saxtead Green, Suffolk

Briefly...

Faulty planes

Pilots only fail to report a fault (and stop an aircraft flying) for one reason: pressure from managers to do so for commercial reasons ("Pilots ignore alerts over faulty planes", 18 July). That pressure is often unstated, but causing the company difficulties will bring its consequences. This will, of course, always be denied by any airline you ask.

Terry Tozer

Barcelona

Public-sector pay

It would make more sense for public-sector pay increases to be staggered so that those earning least would have a pay increase of as close to inflation as possible, and those earning most would have little or no increase, so that the overall effect would be a below-inflation increase. As well as controlling inflation, this would ensure, in the public sector at least, that the low-paid workers do not become too poor and the highly paid do not become too rich.

Peter Jermey

Exeter

Wodehouse's lords

Richard Ingrams is not quite correct that Sir Roderick Spode is P G Wodehouse's only venture into political satire (12 July). Lord Emsworth, in the Blandings Castle stories, is almost certainly modelled on Lord Salisbury, three times prime minister in the 1890s, even down to the detail of the highlight of both their lordships' lives having been when their champion pigs won first prize "for fatness" at agricultural shows.

Stephen Pimenoff

Cheltenham

Grammar matters

So, if the meaning is clear and not clumsy, does good grammar really matter? (Letters, 15 July.) Well, no more than good manners. Why bother with "please" and "thank you"?

D A Dox

Ely, Cambridgeshire

I agree with Jonathan Phillips that precise punctuation is important. A sentence such as "a woman without her man is nothing" requires to be correctly punctuated as "a woman: without her, man is nothing".

John O'Byrne

Dublin

Islington registrar

After 41 years together, my partner and I were able to enter into a civil partnership 18 months ago at Islington Town Hall. Lillian Ladele was not the registrar (letters, 17 July). Had she been, and we, as both "customers" and local council taxpayers, objected to her on account of her being a woman, black, Christian and maybe even heterosexual, I wonder what the reaction would have been.

Tom Rand

London N7

Long-time knife carrier

I am a lady in my eighties and have carried a knife for most of my adult life. My Swiss army knife is invaluable for emergency bottle opening and minor repairs and it has a very useful tool for removing stones from horses' hooves. Am I in danger of spending three years in the slammer?

Grace Martin

Eastbourne, East Sussex

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