Damian Green fails to understand the trials of modern working

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The Work and Pensions Secretary described the trend in employment practices towards the gig economy as ‘exciting’ (PA)

Damian Green must have been away on some type of retreat over the last few months. If not then why is he speaking so much rubbish about exciting opportunities, multiple jobs, no employment rights, casual gigs and working any time of day?

Does he not have any idea that this is exactly what people are angry about?

In the States for years people have juggled three jobs to keep their head above water without access to any employment or heath rights. Is this seriously an exciting prospect?

Then he mentions that the state will not always provide a safety net. That is a great thing to look forward to. We can welcome back the age where my great grandmother’s sister stood in line for the Salvation Army soup kitchen in Woolwich circa 1890!

This is exactly the insanity which will give food and drink to the alt-right as we now call them.

Robert Boston
Kent

No country owns the world

Ever since I was a small child, I have resented having to have permission to leave and return to my own country, though, until recently, I have been very happy to be British. I am long-retired, but feel most sorry for all the young, talented, and well educated young people who cannot have the opportunity and freedom to live and work where they wish. No-one chooses where to be born, no country owns the world.

Ian Turnbull
​Cumbria

Learning from the past

Oh for days gone by when nurses worked as they learnt practical nursing skills whilst being mentored and trained, both State Enrolled Nurses (SEN) and State Registered Nurses (SRN) training being carried out simultaneously instead of them taking degree courses they have to pay for and that spend too much time on ethics at the expense of hands on practicality.

The clock can never be turned back but I feel someone should try to learn from the past.

Jim Parsons
​Redditch

Why is there one rule for Bernie Sanders and another for Donald Trump?

When Bernie Saunders described an open-border migration policy as a right-wing proposal to drive down wages and undermine the nation state, he was applauded for defending the working class.

Why then are Nigel Farage and Donald Trump anathematised as right-wing ideologues for making the same point?

John Doherty
Vienna

There are more important things than Donald Trump to be angry at

Consider a family in Aleppo, short of medical supplies, water and food, surrounded by devastation – being bombed, whether at home or in hospital, aware of the hopelessness of their position, aware of friends and others around them, either maimed, dying or dead from the bombing. I wonder how impressed they are by the outpourings, by many liberally-minded US citizens, of anger, anguish and gnashing of teeth at the election of Trump, yet no such vast outpourings of emotion at what is happening in Aleppo and elsewhere. Is not that incongruity somewhat indecent? Does it not manifest certain self-indulgence? Before history gets rewritten, let us remember that the intensification of the bombing by Assad and the Russians has been occurring, on and off, for months while Obama has been president, and has not just started since the victory of Trump.

Peter Cave
London