A complete ban on all advertising – not just gender stereotyped ones – would be heaven

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(Del Monte)

The most pernicious gender stereotyping in adverts seems not to have been mentioned and it is not to do with roles.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if both men and women could be freed from the pressure to look or smell or dress in ways that are implied to be normal or desirable? The impulse to conform is strong and so easily exploited.

A complete ban on all advertising would be heaven. To observe the effects of such a development on society would be fascinating – people behaving normally and angst free. Isn’t capitalism wonderful?

Steve Ford
Haydon Bridge

A better direction for HS2

I agree with Will Gore that there is a danger that HS2 will benefit London more than the North. However, in order to show good faith, I suggest that work should start by building the line from Manchester and Leeds southwards. This will ensure that, when the project is declared to be too expensive, the North will have, at least, a fast rail link to Birmingham.

Chris Elshaw
Hampshire

The hypocrisy of war

After nearly 10 months of intensive fighting and thousands of American and British air attacks, the Iraqi city of Mosul has fallen and Isis has thankfully finally been forced out.

Like Aleppo in Syria, great swathes of West Mosul lie in ruins, areas so badly hit that it is impossible to reach them as the streets are choked with debris. A monitoring organisation called Airwars estimates that as many as 5,800 civilians died in the siege. In March a single US air strike left 230 civilians dead.

Reports now emerging from Mosul suggest that Iraqi troops are throwing captured Isis soldiers of the top of high buildings.

Ian Duncan Smith speaking about these actions said: “There is little or no sense that the people they capture should be treated in any kind of humane way. It's almost to be expected.”

So why the marked difference in the stories reported about Aleppo and Mosul? The Russians who were also fighting Islamic terrorists rendered Aleppo in a similar state to Mosul but we called them barbarian war criminals whilst our forces in Mosul are hailed as heroes.

Mark Holt
Address supplied

How democratic is Brexit?

The phrase “Democracy must prevail” is another meaningless sound bite promulgated by the Brexiteers and others (Mark Thomas, Letters). Democracy is defined as a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people collectively and is administered by them or by officers appointed by them. It is the latter half of the definition which is constantly overlooked. With a UK voting population of 46 million, the said power has to be administered by its “officers”, that is to say, by the members of both Houses of Parliament.

This definition immediately tells us that the people’s referendum of 23 June 2016 was advisory only. Parliament should put such weight on its result as they think fit. Obviously if the vote had been 81.9 per cent in favour of Brexit, that is an entirely different matter from a vote in favour of 51.9 per cent. In assessing the weight, Parliament should take into account any inaccuracies or misrepresentations (intentional or otherwise) which led to the result of the referendum – eg the now notorious red bus slogan of “We send the EU £350mn a week: lets’s fund our NHS instead – vote Leave”.

At the time of the referendum the people had no idea of what were the true or actual consequences of Brexit. It beggars belief that one year after the referendum we still have no idea, and the election result of 8 June 2017 demonstrated the people’s bafflement. This continuing ignorance clearly invalidates the referendum decision. The matter is now complicated because we have a lame Government whose priority is to stay in power rather than comply with their duty of governing for the wellbeing of the population as a whole.

People are increasingly coming to realise that, once the Brexit terms have been agreed with the European Union and circulated amongst the people, we need Parliament or perhaps a second referendum to authorise and/or ratify the Brexit terms before their implementation. If no authority or ratification is forthcoming, end of Brexit.

David Ashton
Kent

There seems to be some confusion between a referendum and an election. The former is not legally binding and the latter is time-limited, allowing the electorate to change its mind when things don't go according to plan. That's called democracy.

Might I add that I am tired of hearing that Brexit is “the will of the British people”. The truth is it is the will of 37 per cent of the British people or, if we really want to be accurate, 37 per cent of the British electorate!

Adrienne Fitzwilliam
​Tunbridge Wells

Your correspondent Mark Thomas says about Brexit that as a democrat he believes that the will of the majority must prevail. In the UK the only democratic right we have is to elect representatives to do what they think is best on our behalf. We do not have a democracy that gives us any right to tell our representatives what they should do.

The Brexit referendum was an opinion poll at one point in time on issues as understood at that time. It does not and should not bind a government to act either irresponsibly or irrespective of any change in public opinion. If the will of the people is a factor in determining Brexit, there can be no objection to it being reconfirmed when the implications of Brexit are known, by those who are entitled to vote at that time.

Jon Hawksley
London EC1R

Mark Thomas writes that as a democrat he thinks that the Brexit majority must prevail. Democracy is mocked when 37 per cent of the UK wide electorate can take 100 per cent out of the EU whilst 37 per cent of the Scottish electorate could not take Scotland out of the UK.

Referenda are blunt, binary and misleading; first-past-the-post elections are deeply unfair: we should have no more referendums and the UK as a whole needs to adopt a system of proportional representation.

Mike AF Bartlett
Scotland

The public sector deserves better from Philip Hammond

The self-proclaimed “strong and stable” Tory Cabinet has quickly descended in a matter of weeks to being “weak and wobbly”, as cabinet ministers ferociously brief against each other.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond is now firmly in the firing line, claiming that public sector workers are overpaid as he rebuffs advances to end the 1 per cent pay cap. This is even though the incomes of five million of them have fallen since the Tories came to power. Well, as the Chancellor said, “driving a train is so easy a woman could do it”. This from a man who has to endure a salary of a mere £143,000 per annum, plus a free house and chauffeur-driven limousine.

In the year since Hammond has been Chancellor, so well has he performed that the UK has slumped to the bottom of the league of G7 industrial countries in terms of economic growth.

North of the border our economic news is a little rosier, with growth in the first quarter of 2017 at 0.8 per cent, four times that of the UK as a whole – confounding those gleefully awaiting a Scottish recession and to be able to criticise the “failing” Scottish government. As this was not the case, it was the “broad shoulders of the UK”, according to the doomsayers, that led to this growth.

The Tory Government is in total meltdown as we negotiate Brexit. Our public sector, indeed all of us, deserve better than being caught in the middle of a Tory civil war, reinforcing their already woeful performance.

Alex Orr
Edinburgh