Letters: So, who do you want to vote against?

These letters appear in the 20th April issue of The Independent

I cannot be the only voter who is increasingly repelled by the argument which both Labour and the Conservatives are putting forward, namely “The only person who can become Prime Minister after 7 May is Ed Miliband or David Cameron, so to keep David Cameron/Ed Miliband out you have to vote Labour/Conservative.”

This is an arrogant and lazy argument. The arrogance lies in the assumption that voters should really have no choice except between the two parties who have an interest in preserving our moribund and unrepresentative political system as it is.

The argument is intellectually lazy because it is simply not true that only Miliband or Cameron can become PM. It may be overwhelmingly likely, but it is not a certainty.

And it’s a politically lazy argument because it boils down to saying, “You have to vote for us not because we actually have policies which you like, but because we’re marginally less rubbish than the other lot.”

Nick Wray

Derby

If Ed Miliband was a political grown-up he would be flirting madly with Nicola Sturgeon and making us all slaver with the prospect of kicking out the ruling elite. Sadly, he’s such a boy.

All the Tories have to do to keep him making the wrong noises is to accuse him of doing the things that would get Labour into power and he obligingly denies he would do them.

How depressing.

Amanda Baker

Edinburgh

The dust has settled on the latest election TV debate, and the general view seems to be that Nicola Sturgeon is winning them all in a canter.

Haven’t the Scots Nats missed a trick here? They should have put up a candidate in all 650 seats, and they would have swept the country in a landslide.

Then they could have changed the name of the UK to “Caledonia”, and achieved immediate independence.

Dai Woosnam

Grimsby

What the electorate needs even more than honesty, straight answers and less point-scoring is a guide on where to vote tactically to keep the Tories out, and where to vote for the party you really support.

Patrick Cosgrove

Chapel Lawn, Shropshire

Janner: what public interest means

I understand the arguments as to why Lord Janner’s dementia renders him unable to defend himself in court. What I don’t understand is the concept of “Not in the public interest”. I think it is very much in the public interest to get to understand how things can go so badly wrong for young people in care and how the rich and powerful get protected.

I believe the fact that it would cost money but not result in a conviction is the more likely “public interest”. If so, it does not serve justice in this instance. The victims do need their day in court and could perhaps tell us a little about their previous, unsuccessful efforts to get their cases heard.

Merry Cross

Reading

To put on trial someone who is too ill to take part in the trial process or to understand what is going on is an affront to our fundamental principles of justice, as such a person could not possibly receive a fair trial.

If, as appears to be the case, Greville Janner is in that position, due to his dementia, then the Crown Prosecution Service made the correct and only possible decision in deciding that it would not be in the public interest to put him on trial. To try him in the circumstances would not be justice but vengeance.

Mark Stubbs

Sandy, Bedfordshire

I assume that Dr Richard Wood (letter, 18 April) is not a medical doctor, or does he disagree with the four medical experts who have already been consulted in Lord Janner’s case?

If he does, perhaps he would enlighten us on how someone in such an advanced state of dementia could possibly defend himself at a trial or give instructions to someone else to defend him. How would Dr Wood advise him, if he was his patient and could not understand a word being said to him?

Robin Grey QC

London EC4

Since Lord Janner’s family say that he’s “entirely innocent” they should be given their day in court to challenge his numerous accusers and clear his name.

David Penn

Kendal, Cumbria

Right to buy will not work

I am continually amazed at the ability of the Tory Party to make policy announcements that would have the opposite result to the one promised. The latest is the extended right to buy, forcing housing associations to sell their homes to tenants after three years of occupancy.

Since 1980, 1.88 million council homes have been sold under the right to buy. Only 345,000 have replaced them. In many areas, especially the countryside, there are no council homes left and local young people cannot find any affordable homes.

The grants that housing associations receive from the Government to bridge the difference between the cost of building and an affordable rent has been reducing until now it is only about 20 per cent of the cost. The rest of the money is borrowed from banks and building societies.

The security for those loans, which now total well over £20bn, is the equity in their existing homes. If that security is diminished by the loss of stocks, not only will the associations break the terms of the loans, but banks are less likely to lend. Therefore the ability for new development will stop for many associations.

The right-to-buy policy has already meant that around a third of the properties sold in London are now in the hands of private landlords and councils have to pay higher housing benefit for homes that they used to own but were forced to sell. So rather than saving money for the taxpayer, it actually costs more.

The country cannot afford more of these give-away policies that don’t work.

Canon Andrea Titterington

Preston, Lancashire

Not many ‘spoilt wives’ these days

Reading the letters page of The Independent today (18 April), I was suddenly transported back to early in the last century. Brian Rushton wrote: “The three female opposition party leaders are all demanding the end of the current austerity policy, as if living above one’s means is a viable option. They each remind me of a spoilt wife who has had her credit cards confiscated by her husband because of her reckless spending on luxury goods.”

Women are no longer the chattels of our husbands. Many women these days are bearing the brunt of the austerity programme, with cuts to the welfare system. Many are employed on zero-hours contracts, and many working for lower pay than their male colleagues.

The situation that the opposition women leaders were arguing against was the present government’s policy of taking money from the poorer paid or unemployed (more often than not women) and rewarding the “fat cats” (mostly men) to continue with their reckless fleecing of the rest of us.

Penny Joseph

Shoreham-by-Sea West Sussex

Horse died jumping a small fence

The letter from Elisa Allen representing People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (13 April) was misleading. She writes: “Horse fatalities are so common that watching the Grand National races is like having a front row seat at a bullring.” She quotes Seedling as the latest horse to die at these horrible Grand National races.

The Grand National meeting offers three types of racing, hurdles races where the obstacles are small, chases where horses jump regulation fences and the Grand National course, where the fences are larger. There were no fatalities on ether the chase course or Grand National course; Seedling fell in a novices’ hurdle.

The only way to stop these “disgraceful races” would be to ban racing altogether, have all the horses put down and throw thousands on to the dole queue.

Malcolm Howard

Banstead, Surrey

The party that takes the debt seriously

I agree entirely with what Sarah Pegg (letter, 18 April) says about the crucial importance of the steadily increasing size of the national debt rather than the reduction of the deficit. She is, however, wrong in saying that there is no mention of it in the party manifestos. Her point is strongly made on page 8 of the Ukip manifesto.

Rodney Stewart Smith

London NW1

Migrants or illegals?

African and Asian refugees, both political and economic, while floating on the Mediterranean Sea or after arriving in Italian safe havens are defined as migrants by the British media. However, as soon as the same individuals arrive in the French port of Calais, the UK media redefine them as illegal immigrants. Surely this is hypocrisy.

George D Lewis

Brackley, Northamptonshire