David Cameron’s vanity project has decimated youth services

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The former PM’s citizenship project has been handed £1.3bn over the past decade (AFP/Getty)

The scandal of David Cameron’s national citizen service (‘David Cameron’s legacy of failure’, 27 March) is truly dreadful. Ninety per cent of the government’s youth budget has been thrown at a vanity project. While some young people can be said to be beneficiaries of the project, it has fallen woefully short of its grand aims.

That in itself is scandalous. However, the project also coincided with a decade in which local authority youth services, invariably last in line when resources were being allocated, were being hammered by government austerity induced cuts.

Cameron’s legacy as such is a tombstone for youth services. It is an utter disgrace.

John E Harrison

Lancashire

We stand with Bristol protesters

We were students together 18 years ago and helped organise protests against the Iraq War. We failed to stop the war, of course, but we remain proud that we contributed to that unprecedented global movement of opposition to a conflict which resulted in the deaths of 1 million people.

In doing so we established friendships which endure almost two decades later. We live in different countries and cities now and are in touch only sporadically but the solidarity we formed all those years ago is strong and can be resurrected at a moment’s notice: like now, when we are seeing young people protesting on the streets of Bristol.

We remember when that was us. Back in our days of protest there were times we felt vulnerable and out of our depth, we worried no one would come, we rowed about tactics, the merits of no-platforming, and how to deal with the police.

But we are glad that we kept going and we want to say from us, the students of the past, to the young people in Bristol and the students of the present: we witness your political action, we know that there are many who support you, and we suggest you may look back on this in years to come and feel proud you took a stand.

Neshy Boukhari, London

Molly Mulready, London

James Meadway, Manama, Bahrain

Jon Clarke, Tasmania, Australia

Sofie Grettve Von Rosen, Stockholm

Narzanin Massoumi, Bristol

Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, Glasgow

Angus Jones, London

Anna Crowther, London

Omar Srouji, London

Marcus Morgan, Bristol

Brian Callaci, New York

Travel over climate is a mistake

Heathrow and the airlines expect support for reopening the skies to people desperate to go on holiday and restore life as it was pre-pandemic (‘Heathrow airport proposes four-tier traffic light system for foreign holidays, reports say’, 27 March). But this presumes that we should resume our despoliation of the atmosphere.

What difference is there between thousands of aircraft daily spewing carbon dioxide into the stratosphere and settlers engaging in slash-and-burn in the world’s rainforests? Yet, collectively, we condemn the latter while, tacitly or otherwise, condone, even encourage, the former.

This year of lockdown was an opportunity to rethink our future and take steps to avoid the problems that we will face as climate changes. This is unlikely to happen while nation’s remain selfish and self-interested.

As a species, we’re probably overdue for extinction. But we don’t need to hasten our demise, especially since we now recognise that our activities are destroying the world we rely on.

Ian Reid

Kilnwick

Shots fired

Patrick Coburn’s column, ‘Vast sums are wasted on high-tech warfare, while the lessons of failures in real wars are ignored’ (26 March) makes eminent sense militarily, but the Tory’s record suggests that military sense isn’t the point.

There aren’t any dividends to be had from paying soldiers, any more than are to be had from increasing the salaries of other public servants. Spending money on weaponry, on the other hand, offers huge scope for private investors. So slashing the number of soldiers and buying ever more sophisticated and expensive weaponry is an obvious recourse.

Read more:

• The choice is stark: destroy the Republican Party in its current form or watch American democracy die
• Vast sums are wasted on high-tech warfare, while the lessons of failures in real wars are ignored
• I’ve just had my second pandemic birthday – here’s what I’ve learnt over the past 12 months

Anyone who thinks this is an unduly cynical interpretation of what is going on should ask themselves why it was that tens of billions of pounds could be dished out to the private sector, seemingly inexhaustibly, for a hopelessly inadequate test and trace programme that the public health sector would have managed infinitely more effectively.

D. Maughan Brown

York

Georgia will regret new voting law

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, who was adamant that there was no voter fraud in the US state in 2020 and that the results were valid, has signed a new voting law, created in response to the fraud he denies was real. If so, what is the need for the new law?

Republicans lost presidential and senatorial elections in Georgia so they changed the rules to make it harder for black people to vote. It’s no more complicated than that. The law doesn’t make it harder to cheat; it is a form of cheating.

Kemp said he is proud to sign this law because it tightens voting rules in the state. Then why does the law make it a crime to give food and water to voters waiting in line? This is unheard of. Georgia’s GOP couldn’t win in a fair election, so they decided to change the rules to try to win by cheating.

To add insult to injury, when black representative Park Cannon peacefully attempted to view Governor Kemp’s closed-door signing of the “voter suppression” bill, she was arrested.

When I think of this law, two pictures remain stuck in my mind. One of the governors signing the law while surrounded by five white GOP officials; the other of a black lawmaker being dragged away by two white police officers.

Before the peach state and the rest of the south rise again, they should start first by rising above racism, bigotry, and intolerance.

Mahmoud El-Yousseph

Westerville, Ohio