Letters: Prince Charles

Charles spends taxpayers' money on doing good

When living in the United Kingdom I served for a short time on the Prince's Trust, a foundation set up entirely as an initiative of the Prince of Wales. Only people close to him and his work and those that have observed him "in action" with the public can understand what effort and leadership he gives to these projects ("A new expenses scandal?", 24 June).

He and the trust staff, together with a large number of willing and proud volunteers, have helped thousands of young people get up and start businesses, feel good about themselves and get a life.

What people need to remember that the bulk of his government "allowance" is used to employ people, just as HM the Queen's allowance is used. They don't need the taxpayer to employ them but they do need the taxpayer to fund their overseas diplomatic trips and royal garden parties, which everyone wants to attend, that acknowledge and reward those that deliver a public service.

Keith Stuart Bales

Bibra Lake, Western Australia

The Prince of Wales's strictures against the architecture of the age in which we live are inevitably conditioned by his lack of freedom to see modern buildings, as we, the people, do. To us modern architecture is the environment, designed for our use and convenience, where we live, work and play; the places which we are free to visit informally daily, nightly, without being steered and impeded by an officious escort of officials and mayors.

Prince Charles cannot mill about with us in the National Theatre (which he has so much derided), shoulder to shoulder with Tom, Dick and Mary, in a living crowd. He does not, as far as we know, experience the British Library (which he has mocked) as a calm and inspiring place of study. To him a modern building is an architect's drawing or model, or a façade seen in passing from the interior of a royal limo.

Yet let us allow the Prince some credit. Had his interference not been flattered, and the initial designs discarded, we would not today be enjoying the pleasing (if stylistically mannered) square and streetscape north of St Paul's Cathedral, nor Robert Venturi's endearingly witty Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery.

Peter Forster

London N4

Get ministers out of Parliament

It was kind of Steve Richards (Opinion, 23 June) to refer to my 2001 pamphlet "The Last Prime Minister", in which I called for separate election of Prime Minister and Parliament.

Far from it being a fantasy, I believe that I described realistically the subjection of Parliament to the executive. Eight years on I remain convinced that this remedy of a separation of powers – well tested in so many democracies – offers the best hope of reviving parliamentary democracy and creating a healthy division of responsibility in our system of government.

The country certainly needs a considered debate on radical reform of our constitution, not panic-stricken politicians rewriting the British constitution on the back of an envelope in response to media-driven indignation over expenses.

Graham Allen MP (Nottingham N, Lab)

House of Commons

There is no reason why the Government should be drawn from Parliament. The arbitrary ennoblement of the Prime Minister's latest favourites is clearly unacceptable. The House of Commons may well not contain the appropriate talent.

The USA seems to manage a democracy with its "ministers" in neither House of Congress and with an open appointment process requiring senatorial approval.

If the suggestion that the number of MPs be reduced is accepted, and the Government continues to be drawn from the Commons, and that Government is not itself reduced in size, the payroll vote will be even bigger proportionally than it is now.

It would be much better if MPs saw themselves monitoring the Government rather than cravenly currying favour in an attempt to join it.

John Henderson

Winchester, Hampshire

Constitutional change is not, as Bruce Anderson rightly suggests (Opinion, 15 June) the same as electoral reform, and we need to be extra vigilant about the wordplay that this government uses to confuse the debate.

By all means let's discuss alternatives to our current system of representative democracy – fixed-term parliaments, giving the electorate some involvement in the selection of candidates and allowing the recall of under-performing or over-claiming MPs would be a start – but the way in which we vote worries me far less than untramelled executive power.

Over the past 10 years, the ability of the legislature to rein back the government of the day has all but disappeared. Absolute majorities in Parliament are, of course, partly responsible, but, as Bruce Anderson points out, so is a ludicrously long and largely unnecessary legislative agenda that prevents full debate of key issues; it has always struck me as odd that a debating chamber has no time for debate, without which there is no mechanism for holding the executive to account in a public forum.

Select committees and set-piece knockabout nonsense like prime ministerial and ministerial question times simply do not have the incisiveness or the forensic skills needed to get to the core of any issue.

The constitutional question is how we separate Parliament and the executive, as suggested by Steve Richards (23 June). I don't think the way we vote can do that, but a proper debate – not a simplistic referendum where the executive, especially the wholly untrustworthy one that's in power right now, gets to choose the question – might come up with some viable options.

A newly-elected parliament with a newly-appointed Speaker is, I guess, the best place to start. I wonder if they'll find the strength?

Paul Gillions

Hitchin, Herfordshire

To make MPs more mindful of their special responsibilities and status would it not be wiser to increase pomp and ceremony rather than diminish it, so they don't think they're in any old job for a wage and expenses? If they were all to wear wigs, ruffs and buckled shoes, with a fanfare from liveried buglers each session, this would remind them daily of their unique roles and positions and make banker-like instincts less likely.

Ian Flintoff

Oxford

As one of the two co-chairs, with Bruce Kent, of the main tactical voting organisation in the 1997 general election, the Get Rid of Tories Tactical Voting campaign (GROT for short), I'm keen as mustard on the idea of forming a Green/Lib Dem electoral agreement that Michael Worthington from Norwich promotes in his letter (18 June).

However, Michael ought to take on board that there are other political parties who could be part of this progressive third grouping and that the best way of guaranteeing multi-party representation at Westminster is to push hard for a referendum on electoral reform to coincide with the next election.

Richard Denton-White

Portland, Dorset

Struggling with disruptive pupils

Further to the article "Nursery pupils excluded for being sexually explicit" (24 June) on Ofsted's report on disruptive behaviour in infant and junior schools, my wife, who teaches reception and infants, has commented on the problem before.

Behaviour standards are getting lower, but when a teacher asks for local authority help with a disruptive child (or one with learning or behavioural difficulties), none is forthcoming until the child is excluded. Then support suddenly materialises.

Why is our education system so unbelieving of the capabilities of teachers that it cannot take note of their concerns about a problem when it can be nipped in the bud, rather than after it has become such an issue that not only the child in question but all of its classmates have already suffered?

name and address supplied

I read that our Glorious Leader is thinking of teaching; how would someone who can not even run a political party, a government, a country or an economy imagine that he could ever control a class of eight- and nine-year-old children? They would run rings round him.

Derek Hanlin

Porth, South Wales

Don't ignore the history of Iraq

No, Saddam Hussein would not have taken up stamp collecting or pressing wild flowers, as J R Tardif notes (letter, 23 June). But then neither too did a generation or more of western imperialists who ruled or directed the entire region before Saddam emerged. It is against the background of these ruthless and controlling outsiders that we should always consider the Middle East today – something that Tony Blair, with his pride in ignorance of history, refused to do.

First there were the outright imperialists, French and British, Sykes, Balfour, Allenby, Gouraud and the rest of the repellent and sanctimonious crew. Then after the Second World War the Americans muscled in, and regularly snuffed out any form of democracy, since to them at that time democracy equalled Communism. Hence their favouring of strong-arm dictators such as Saddam Hussein.

Now, with the Soviet Union gone, they have performed a 180-degree turnaround, and democracy, albeit guided, is in fashion. The people of the region may legitimately wonder for how long, and what the next grand idea to be put into action by the unstable and irresolute Men of Power will be.

Christopher Walker

London W14

I note that Mr Tardif, and your previous correspondent Keith Gilmour, supported the Iraq invasion because, in short, Saddam was a brutal dictator; but I do wonder how they think the UK and US governments decided which brutal dictator to punish, with such a selection available worldwide.

Julie Harrison

Hertford

Elderly will miss out on digital radio

In this week's "Ten Best" selection (24 June) the three cheapest digital radios would cost over half a week's income for a single person living on the basic weekly state pension of £92.25.

The oldest, most frail and isolated older people in this country are also among the poorest of the poor. They depend on their radios in a way that most of the rest of the population doesn't. TV can't fill the void that a radio fills in the middle of the night, when eyesight fails, or when there is simply a need for more choice and information that can only come through radio. Moreover, a radio quite simply is "company" when there is no other.

Who, I wonder, is going to fund and find new radios for these people and others like them?

Paula Jones

London SW20

Briefly...

Bad language

Dame Judi Dench says "bastard" in a Bond film and this ups the classification to (12A). In Wimbledon fortnight, all one can say is, "You cannot be serious?"

Mike Bor

London W2

Meat and soya

A Reid (letter, 20 June) is right to point a finger at tropical soya as a significant factor in deforestation and climate change. However the implied association with vegetarianism is utterly misguided since over half the soya imported into the UK (and around 90 per cent of total worldwide soya production) goes into animal feed. In 1995 around 400,000 hectares of "extra" land were required to grow soya imported to feed UK livestock (equivalent to around 10 per cent of the entire UK crop growing area).

Brian Wray

Banbury, Oxfordshire

As a vegetarian, I am puzzled to read the arguments (letters; 23, 24 June) about "humane" methods of slaughter of animals for meat. How could anyone have any feelings for those whom they are going to kill (though not personally) and eat.

H D Shah

Harrow, Middlesex

Jobless executives

As an unemployed professional, I must point out that Sean O'Grady ("Can we really say that the recession is over?" 12 June) is incorrect in saying that unemployed executives and professionals will be ineligible for jobseeker's allowance because of their savings. There are two types of jobseeker's allowance, contribution-based and income-based. You are precluded from claiming the latter if you have savings of more than £16,000; however, if you have previously been working and paying National Insurance, then you can claim contribution-based jobseeker's allowance – currently £64.30 a week.

Julie Holland

Hertford

Bedtime reading

John Walsh (23 June) guesses that President Sarkozy, meeting an author, might have said: "J'ai lit tout de ton oeuvre". The past participle of lire (to read) is lu. Lit means "bed". A Freudian slip ?

Carolyn Beckingham

Lewes, East Sussex