IoS letters, emails and online postings (20 December 2015)

Following the climate deal in Paris, David Cameron stated, “We have secured our planet for many, many generations to come – and there is nothing more important than that”. So this must be the same David Cameron whose government has cancelled the Green Deal, stopped onshore wind, slashed subsidies for solar, and abandoned carbon capture and storage, all in the six months leading up to the Paris summit. It also appears to be the same David Cameron who is subsidising the development of yet another fossil fuel, shale gas, and bypassing local authorities over fracking applications. Presumably, he has a twin brother who is doing all these unspeakable things behind his back. Could he be called George Osborne by any chance?

Dr Robin Russell-Jones

Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire

Vodafone claims that it reports its tax affairs on a country-by-country basis (Letters, 13 December). This is an important claim. Campaigners for tax justice have long argued that multinationals should have to report their activities on a public, country-by-country basis, as it exposes suspicious patterns – such as the bulk of a firm’s profits being declared in a tiny tax haven.

Vodafone’s current reports of its activities in each country are so broad-brush as to give no idea whether it is paying its fair share of tax in each country where it operates. Vodafone is doing more than many multinationals, but to imply that it has met the gold standard for financial transparency is going much too far.

Dr Matti Kohonen

Principal Adviser, Private Sector Christian Aid, London SE1

Changes to the NHS bursary system will also affect students studying radiography, radiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, podiatry, operating department practice, dietetics and orthoptics (“Trainee nurses to march against ‘scandalous’ fees”, 13 December). It may also affect paramedics. All these professions play a vital role, and start on the same pay scale as nurses.

H Bryant

Derby

Mark Leftly’s report on the latest twist in the saga of extending Right to Buy to housing association tenants illustrates the muddle created by the eagerness of the National Housing Federation to help the Government introduce this nonsensical policy (“Tenants in rural areas to get right to buy in town”, 13 December). The portable discount aimed at enabling rural tenants to buy elsewhere will be complex and costly to administer, and could damage small rural communities by luring people away. It is not too late to put the extension of Right to Buy into the Housing and Planning Bill going through Parliament, enabling MPs to argue the case for statutory exemptions from this misguided policy for rural areas.

David Head

Navenby, Lincolnshire

In education, the function of central government should be to lay down principles, and set national standards that apply to all schools – regardless of who owns or manages them (“Lords in revolt over Tories’ academies plan,” 13 December). Any school may have problems from time to time. When they do, they will be local and particular to that school. “Micro-management” by central government is seldom satisfactory, rarely effective and usually inefficient.

Malcolm Morrison

Swindon, Wiltshire

Because I spent the weekend at the National Para-Swimming Championships in Manchester it struck me that Michael Calvin, in his column about Tyson Fury and his fans (13 December) resorted to an intellect-based insult, using low IQ and being an idiot as a form of abuse. Does having a low IQ give you a tendency to make revolting threats? No. Does being “an idiot” (an outdated word for those with an IQ of less than 70 but still used legally) make you likely to be a football hooligan? No. I’ll get back to watching super-fast, super-fit, low-IQ swimmers now.

Jacqueline Paschoud

London SE23