The Conservatives need to address racism within their party

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Conservative MP Anna Marie Morris has faced criticism for using the term "n*****r in a woodpile" in parliament (PA)

Given the recent media clamour for Jeremy Corbyn to root out anti-Semitism in the Labour Party – something I have not personally come across in some 40 decades of active Party membership – can we now expect the same demands for Theresa May to set-up an inquiry into racism in the Conservative Party?

She might begin by asking the current Foreign Secretary why, in his Daily Telegraph column, he once felt it appropriate to refer to members of the Commonwealth as “flag-waving piccaninnies”.

Dr Mick Wilkinson – Lecturer in 'Race' & Social Justice, University of Hull
Address supplied

So Anne Marie Morris used the “N word” during a speech and her partner Roger Kendrick the other month alleged that the “education crisis” is down to immigrants high birth rate?

I wonder if it has crossed the minds of fair minded people what this pair and their “buddies” say in private if this is what they risk in public?

Possibly quite shocking I would hazard a guess!

Robert Boston
​Kingshill

Yvette Cooper was right to travel first class

The piece today by Skylar Baker Jordan (If you think Yvette Cooper's train journey makes her a 'class traitor', congratulations – you're helping to destroy Labour) was a good argument and a fun read but it missed the point. When people plan to read confidential documents on the train they are often required to travel first class so that those in nearby seats can't read over their shoulder. Even if Yvette Cooper wasn't required to travel first, it was probably a good idea so that she could read and work in peace. I would have done the same, optics or no optics.

Dale Thomson
Winchester

It will take more than coffee to keep you alive

So coffee helps us live longer. How many times in the past have we been told something is good for us, only to be told few years later not to touch it with a barge pole?

My grandfather, who survived the First World War, had a fried breakfast every day, insisted on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for Sunday lunch, whose favourite snack was bread and dripping with lots of salt, who enjoyed more than his fair share of alcohol, who smoked, but never drank coffee in his life, lived a full and active life to 95 years old. I remember once telling him alcohol was bad for him, to which he replied “if you give up everything you enjoy, you don’t live any longer – it just seems like it”!

When researching my family tree, I found that most of his father and mothers families were long lived, so I think it’s more to do with genetics than anything else.

John Hudson
Derby

Politicians need to involve the electorate in decision making processes

It is a perennial surprise to me that, as far as I know, no organisation attempts to produce a wide ranging manifesto by a process of popular contribution, discourse and vote. The party manifestos could then be measured against the result and might even be influenced by it.

At present the electorate is offered the choices made by a range of people and entities out with democratic influence and with their own agendas.

May’s offer of a synthesis of policies between parties is not an attractive option because the electorate is still excluded from the process, other than the effectively binary choice (at present) at general elections between what the political establishment sees fit to offer.

Steve Ford
​Haydon Bridge

Thatcher has ruined Wimbledon

While watching the tennis at Wimbledon, and in particular the match between Rafa Nadal and Gilles Muller, it became apparent that almost the whole Wimbledon crowd were supporting the one player (Nadal) to the exclusion of his opponent.

On thinking a little more about this, I concluded that this has become quite prevalent over the last number of years and at odds with the age old adage “the British love to support the underdog”.

I then got to thinking when the situation changed and it suddenly became clear to me that it is all as a direct result of Thatcherism, and quite sad to see.

Alan Barbour
Edinburgh