Letters: A vital contribution to our democracy

These letters appear in the 15th February 2016 edition of The Independent

The spirit and quality of The Independent will endure (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

The Independent has been a vital part of the everyday lives of independent-minded citizens in Britain for some decades, and its passing as a printed newspaper is a cause of great regret to its many thousands of loyal readers.

It has been unique in holding a priceless space for a multiplicity of voices – left, right and centre – in a genuinely pluralistic journalistic offering that no other UK newspaper has remotely matched. As a regular reader, I hope that i continues to thrive and to keep this fine tradition, and that you can continue with your highest of journalistic standards in the online version of The Independent.

Thank you all for your vital contribution to our democratic life. We will miss you.

Dr Richard House

Stroud, Gloucestershire

I have been an avid reader of The Independent for almost 15 years. It has been passionate, radical, inspirational and benevolent about its news reporting.

We live in the digital age. Digitisation is shaping the way we live, work, play, study, write and love. In such a climate, The Independent is to be commended for being forward-looking and bold in tackling the challenges that lie ahead.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London NW2

A sad day for UK democracy and journalism with the cessation of the print editions of The Independent.

With The Independent flying the flag for a balanced independent voice on social, political and commercial issues, those of us of a centre/centre left persuasion had some hope of a more equitable society eventually emerging.

I hope the online edition prospers but fear the potential loss of excellent journalists and contributors that have made the print edition so readable. Whatever happens, thank you for your erudition and perspectives and helping to challenge the right-wing dominance of the UK press over the years

Laurie Price

Horsham, West Sussex

We spend £12.20 each seven-day week on The Independent. We buy it at our newsagent and some of our money goes to keeping Mr and Mrs Das’s shop functioning as a parish pump where neighbours gossip and start the day.

There’s a clue about what newspapers are like in the name. You don’t have to use electricity to read them. You can spread them out and view more than one bit at a time. And afterwards they can line a sock drawer. Name an iPad that can do that.

We’ll miss that. We’ll miss your astringent alternative. And we’ll see if the withdrawal symptoms force us into the methadone maintenance of a screen subscription.

Mary Pimm

Nik Wood

London E9

While, like tens of thousands of readers, I will be very sorry no longer to be able to open up its pages, I wish to thank all at the The Independent for, over so many years, delivering on its original promise: to bring its readership fine writing. I wish you all well in what is clearly a difficult time.

Cole Davis

London NW2

For nearly 30 years, since I bought the very first edition of The Independent, I have read it every day while eating my breakfast.

It has not been much of a problem when I dropped dollops of marmalade or spilled coffee on the newspaper, as they can be scooped or mopped up and the print is still readable. However, with the demise of The Independent in print format, I am now faced with the very real possibility of damaging my computer if I attempt to continue reading the Indy online while nibbling and slurping my breakfast.

Perhaps, before you cease printing The Independent, your columnists or your younger readers could provide suggestions on not only how best to combine the equal joys of eating breakfast and continuing to read The Independent but also on how we print readers can quickly learn to navigate the geography of the online format.

Kate Caddy

Diptford, Devon

As someone who has been one of your loyal readers since the first edition of The Independent in 1986 (I still have a copy tucked away in a drawer somewhere) and a regular correspondent to your letters page, I shall mourn the passing of the print edition. In particular, I shall miss seeing in print the dramatic photographs that have been one of best features of the paper.

I recognise, however, the sad economic reality that has driven the decision.

David Lamming

Boxford, Suffolk

Matthew Norman has been proven right at least twice in the past week. The US Defense Department has, in effect, agreed with him in equating Trident with the UK’s strontium cod-piece (10 February).

More sadly, his warning piece on the oncoming reality of a one-party state (3 February) has, if anything, been brought on by the loss of a printed edition of a non-Tory-supporting newspaper. A healthy democracy requires a contrarian voice.

I wish to thank and wish all the best for the future to all those who helped to bring your paper to the news-stand.

Angelo Micciche

St Erth, Cornwall

So how am I to lay a fire, or unite two colonies of bees, with a mobile app?

John Davies

Haygrove Honey Farm Twyford, Dorset

Hunt presses the nuclear button

Jeremy Hunt has deployed what he has called his “nuclear option”, the imposition of a contract on the junior doctors.

I thought the idea behind a nuclear deterrent was that it is never used by either side because of the MAD principle – mutually assured destruction. Now that Hunt has gone ahead and pressed the nuclear button, and imposed a contract that will stretch out an already overstretched and overworked workforce even thinner, I presume he had in mind the potential mutual destruction of patients’ lives and his career, as well as the longer-term political fallout.

Dr Vic Harris

Rossendale, Lancashire

I have a strong suspicion that Jeremy Hunt’s behaviour is part of a darker strategy which is to mess up the NHS so much that the Tories will feel able to say to us that the only way to rescue it is to privatise it openly instead of doing it by stealth.

Why is it that other countries, some considerably less wealthy than we are, can afford to spend a much greater proportion of their GDP on healthcare, a proportion that the Tories would declare “unsustainable” for us. I suggest that the Tories care far more about keeping taxes down for the wealthy than they care about the wellbeing of those who cannot afford to pay huge premiums for medical insurance.

Dudley Dean

Maresfield, East Sussex

The vision of the Government is of a health “service” provided by private contracting businesses where profits go to directors and shareholders and are taken from us taxpayers. Every government action on the NHS must be viewed with this in mind.

Outsourcing of services usually increases costs and reduces quality.

Dr Chris Burns-Cox

Wotton-under-Edge Gloucestershire

Cameron’s EU child benefit farce

The EU referendum farce continues unabated.

David Cameron sets out to stop paying child benefits to the overseas dependants of workers from EU countries, but instead settles for an arrangement whereby we continue to pay it but at the domestic rates of 28 different countries, some even higher than the current payments.

And since we will also have the considerable costs of modifying and running payment systems to handle this, and of continuously monitoring all other countries for changes in their domestic payments, it’s possible that this change will actually cost us more.

And here’s the rub – our only option to say we don’t want this change is to vote to leave the EU completely.

Has there ever been a more inept PM than this blunderer?

Gerard Bell

Ascot

There will be no migrant camps in Kent following a Brexit.

The Jungle camp exists in Calais because its inhabitants refuse to claim asylum in France, preferring to do so in the UK. On arrival in Dover, they would immediately claim asylum – and expect to be housed.

Dr John Doherty

Vienna

Taxes squandered on luxuries

It beggars belief how profligate public servants such as John Bercow can be with our tax money.

I’m not sure which are more despicable, those bankers who gamble with our money and lose it, or those politicians like Mr Bercow who squander our money on luxuries, which he, no doubt, fails to recognise as luxuries (“Bercow’s expenses include £2,000 dinner”, 13 February). How alienated they are from us all, the so-called general public.

Rob Baur

Llanarmon D C, Wrexham