What will parents do on polling day?

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For parents across the country, polling day represent not only a chance to have a say on the next UK government, but a childcare challenge. Thousands of schools up and down the country are used as polling stations. Might I suggest that buildings such as churches, which sit largely vacant on polling days, are used instead? That way, children will not have to miss a day of their education and working parents will not be left struggling to find childcare. Indeed, churches might appreciate some more footfall – 18,000 fewer people attended services last year than did the year before. It is time the UK government thought more practically, the Church of England more creatively.

Caroline Wade
North London

Sucker punch

Less than half a day: that’s how long it took the BBC to turn a four-year-old with pneumonia forced to lie on the floor of a hospital into a story about thuggish Labour activists. Only, the story was made up by the Tory party.

The Tories briefed journalists that an aide to health secretary Matt Hancock had been punched in the face by a Labour supporter as he helped Hancock into his car while leaving Leeds General Hospital. Laura Kuenssberg tweeted what the Tories had told her almost word for word (Robert Peston and Paul Brand also retweeted the fake news). It turns out no punch was thrown. Rather, the aide walked in into a man looking the other way.

When Labour Party activists have actually been assaulted – including in Rotherham, where a 72-year-old man was hospitalised – Hancock’s team lying about an assault is a disgrace.

The Tories are prepared to openly lie to journalists. What are they telling them about their plans for the NHS?

Julie Partridge
South London

Vote with your mind, not your heart

I never imagined in a thousand lifetimes that I’d agree with Chuka Umunna, but on tactical voting, I do. Jeremy Corbyn is doggedly sticking to the tired, tribalist mantra that rejects tactical voting, robotically telling people to “vote Labour” in all circumstances.

For those in despair at the prospect of a nasty market-fundamentalist government winning power for five years, the rational case for tactical voting is overwhelming. In a hopelessly distorting first-past-the-post electoral system, it is an ethical imperative to do anything possible to prevent the return to power of a government that will continue to trash the planet and Trumpify our country.

Anti-Tory tactical voting in marginal seats is the only effective way of preventing a Tory majority come Friday. If that results in a dilution of Labour’s manifesto via a minority government, that is a small price to play for preventing another five years of Boris Johnson.

Richard House
Stroud, Gloucestershire

Crying communism

The mere suggestion of taking Britain’s privatised utilities back into state control leads right-wing politicians to cry communism. It seems, however, that we are quite happy for other states to have a stake in our privatised utilities: the recent Virgin Trains franchise is partly run by the Italian state-backed railway firm First Trenitalia. Across Europe, power, water and rail seem to be run perfectly well, in many cases better than in the UK, under state ownership. And the last time I looked, none of these states were communist, either.

Geoff Forward
Stirling

Johnson’s phone fiasco

Boris Johnson sounded like a misfiring robot when he was challenged over the little boy with pneumonia lying on a hospital floor. Staggeringly, he eventually tried to get back on-message by dragging Brexit into it.

But perhaps most staggering of all was the fact that he took the reporter’s phone and put it in his pocket. When in doubt, revert to bullying Bullington tactics.

Penny Little
Great Hasley, Oxfordshire

Food bank budgeting

On Friday, Conservative candidate for Broxtowe Darren Henry took to the stage at a local hustings to say that people who use food banks “struggle ... to manage their budget.”​ We have heard this before: in May 2017, one Dominic Raab (remember him?) was on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show when he said that the “typical user” of food banks was “has a cash-flow problem”. The Tories glibly reject those of us who are struggling to survive not as a sign of an economy that’s not working for everyone, but as a lack of accountancy skills. I can only hope that come Friday morning that there will be many a Tory member who suddenly finds that they are no longer able to claim an MP’s salary.

Steff Watkins
Islington, London