A new economic model is required to defeat gang violence

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Tributes to Israel Ogunsola, a victim of knife crime in Hackney in April (EPA)

Watching the news, a couple of themes occur over and over again. Stabbings, and today in the West Midlands drive-by shootings and cuts to services. I can’t help but think that “as you sow so shall you reap” applies here.

For years now right back to the 1980s, governments of various parties have cut local funding, forcing cuts on everything from social care to education, to youth services and libraries. Councils are at last screaming that they cannot and will not cope rather than pretend they can deliver the undeliverable.

The message is clear: there’s no one there for you, you are on your own. OK, if you have a strong, stable and financially secure support system around you; but if not, is it any wonder that some young people look for an alternative support network and end up in a society most of us don’t recognise or understand?

We may not fully understand these structures but the deaths they seem to generate are not confined to those who join them but are just as likely to effect innocent bystanders, so they directly affect us all.

Sadiq Khan says it could take a generation to change the culture of violence. I hope he is right but fear that until we change the low-tax, low-services, “I’m all right Jack” culture that has grown since the 1980s we have little cause for optimism.

The damage to British society we are now witnessing has taken place over the past 30 years but until we recognise the cause we can’t solve the problem.

John Simpson
Ross-on-Wye

A like-minded soul

Thanks to The Independent, I think I have just found my long-lost twin.

I am sure this must be the case, since I find myself in 100 per cent agreement with every point made in Michael Mann’s letter.

It has always been obvious to me that our system of politics has a corrupting influence on far too many people who join for all the right reasons, and is a convenient home for certain roguish elements (currently too many to name here).

While Oliver Cromwell did his best to design a functioning democratic system, it seems that the fact he was a soldier influenced him to produce an adversarial system, designed as if two opposing armies were waging war with one another, instead of debating and coming to common agreement as to the best way to solve the problems of the day, and produce the best outcomes for the people of Britain. The very structure of the Commons actually lends itself to this end, with the two “armies” facing each other over a “no-man’s land” in the middle. This is the ideal arrangement for rogues and egotists to excel (some members do an excellent job of combining both of these attributes), and for nothing of any great merit to be done for the good of the nation.

That our parliamentarians have only recently been held to account for their honesty with regard to their expenses, but nothing else, surely means some of the biggest rogues in Britain must either already be, or wish they were politicians. If nothing else changes, it would be my dying wish that laws of honesty were placed upon our politicians. This might, even, have the added benefit of discouraging or filtering out those who are currently disgracing the Commons with reports of bullying and misogyny, etc.

If I might be allowed an addition to my wish list, it would be that parliament is uprooted from Westminster and becomes a travelling event, relocating in a different region of Britain every (say) five years, but always in a building designed to help overcome the existence of two hostile armies. By this means, I believe two of the historic problems with our democratic system could be tackled, those being its warring nature, and its tendency to see only that which can be seen from Westminster Bridge on a clear day.

I live in hope of the day when the masses stand up and demand a parliamentary system that works in everyone’s best interest, with honesty and collaboration being its hallmarks. Until then, it appears we are doomed to more of the same, slowly leading us all to an increasingly dystopian future.

David Curran
Feltham

A poppy is always a personal choice

Your report highlights a worrying trend in recent years. The fact that there now exists a climate in which James McClean (Stoke City footballer) and Nemanja Matic (Manchester United) feel a need to explain why they don’t wear a poppy beggars belief. Deciding whether or not to wear a poppy is just the sort of exercise of freedom of expression which many “poppy fascists” would readily remind us we fought two world wars to preserve. Whether we remember or not, wearing a poppy to mark the occasion or if one simply doesn’t care is a personal position and so should be free from any scrutiny whatsoever.

I’ve donated to the Royal British Legion and taken the time to visit some of the most totemic battlefields of the past two centuries (including the Crimea, Somme and Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad) to privately acknowledge the millions who died in those bloody engagements. But I’ve not worn a poppy for years.

Marc Patel
London SE21

May’s condemnation of those who burnt Grenfell effigy is pure hypocrisy

Theresa May condemned as “utterly unacceptable” the sick thugs who “celebrated” bonfire night by burning a model of the Grenfell Tower complete with a representation of a Muslim woman in a burqa.

I wonder if Theresa May – author of the “hostile environment” against immigrants, and the leader who took no action when her then foreign secretary Boris Johnson went into print to mock Muslim women who wore the burqa as “letterboxes” and “bank robbers” – can explain where those racist brutes got it into their heads it was acceptable to laugh at the 72 who died in the Grenfell Tower tragedy and OK to single out Muslim women who died there for a special titter?

Sasha Simic
London

Philip Hammond needs to confront school funding

Philip Hammond is “surprised ... and disappointed” by reaction to his decision to allocate one-off, meagre additional funding to schools to pay for “little extras” (or whatever patronising term he used). This demonstrates either a complete failure to understand the financial situation of most schools over the past five years or he is simply being disingenuous.

He compounds this poor judgement by blaming school leaders for rising class sizes which, he implies, cannot be the result of falling budgets because “per-pupil funding was protected”. This latter nonsense has been irritatingly churned out by the Department for Education whenever school funding has been criticised in recent years but at least its deceit was expressed in terms of total funding available.

Unfortunately the Department for Education failed to make any reference to rising pupil numbers in this context. They seem to have stopped saying this now that their cynical and inaccurate calculations have been exposed, but Philip Hammond has not been told. I wonder if anyone has told him that schools have had to find increases to national insurance and pension contributions from their existing budgets. This, in itself, represents a cut.

Like the rest of the public sector, education has been cut to the bone throughout the long years of this apparently ongoing austerity. There have been casualties among the children and young people as well as amongst the staff. While wrestling with reduced resources, schools and teachers have continued to cope with ridiculously high workloads (including Mr Gove’s ideologically driven, so-called “standards raising” curriculum) and the stress that this brings.

I write as a recently retired school senior leader of more than 40 years’ experience and a school governor. I cannot remember a time when teaching was harder or less rewarding. What schools need from the government is some recognition and understanding of the pressures they face, not flippancy and petulance from the chancellor.

David Lowndes​
Soberton

State of the nation’s railways

I agree with Simon Calder about the fares structure and pricing. But regarding train quality, I travelled from Derby to Crewe and back yesterday on a train which consisted of one coach, which was not particularly clean, and the toilet was out of order both ways.

Although there was some disabled access, a disabled person would not have been able to use the toilet even if it was working.

By the way, most people do not live in London.

Doug Flack
Derby