Letters

Labour deserved it

Martin Bright asks "So what happens next . . . ?" (5 May). Well, the answer given at the local elections is clear enough: the people said it's time for a change and time to give the Tories a chance. On the other hand, Compass believes that Labour might still survive if it ditches its Blairite strategies and appeals to "the workers" and to the nicer sort of social democrat.

And yet we know - do we not? - that modern plutocracies have dispensed with party politics everywhere and that our own parliament now decides nothing of vital importance. Public service aspires mainly to populate the boardrooms of our major banks, and our economies mostly rely on ever-increasing levels of personal consumption.

Des McConaghy
Liverpool

Martin Bright need not trouble himself with "what happens next" for Labour: the party is finished. Voters who consider themselves on the left, progressive, or interested in social justice need simply to abandon Gordon Brown and his jaded, lacklustre and confused Labour and vote for the Green Party instead.

Daniel Carins
Smethwick, West Midlands

Martin Bright quotes an MP as complaining: "People are saying . . . it's not Labour any more, it's not our party any more." However, Bright appears to believe that Labour can recover. I do not think it can, at least not in Scotland. People like me, from a large Scots Catholic working-class family, who voted Labour as easily as they breathed, no longer support the party.

I spent 35 years as a party activist, constituency chair, councillor and Labour Group leader and held most other offices in the party. Almost everyone like me has left the party; in the west of Scotland, Labour is an empty shell, run by handfuls of old men. Bright mentions reasons for voting Labour: the minimum wage (too low), tax credits (so difficult to claim that the eligible give up) and Sure Start (Brown's aping of failed American models). These are nowhere near enough to balance out the wars, Labour's espousal of free-market global capitalism, PPP, and now the obscenity of watching £50bn being poured over the banks. I will never again vote Labour, nor can I envisage any circumstances that would make me vote for Labour - a view held by many.

Alistair Tuach
Dumbarton, West Dumbartonshire

More nanny state

Professor Alison Ravetz's excellent article ("Is the government trying to abolish illness?", 5 May) capably identifies what can be summed up as a moral panic around chronic illnesses and people who suffer from these. The outrage against hordes of alleged "malingerers" and "hypochondriacs", whipped up by the government and media, shows itself to be based on inaccurate and misinterpreted data. In addition, Ravetz conveys the tragic predicament of people suffering illnesses that can lead to them being labelled as malingerers or hypochondriacs. This understanding is absent from government accounts of such illnesses, particularly diagnoses of "chronic fatigue syndrome".

Being told one's illness is "psychosomatic", a result of disordered thinking, and being offered only cognitive behavioural therapy - when what is needed is thorough investigation of the illness and appropriate support - is an intolerable tragedy that many people face in modern times.

Angela Kennedy
Via email

Good to talk?

In the four or five decades of its existence, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has been talked up by its proponents but its efficacy has never been properly backed up with statistics ("Can talking make you better?", 5 May). There are no universal standards by which CBT is conducted, or for patients to whom it is given. It is the modern equivalent of a bottle of Doctor Feel-Good elixir. Yet, despite protests, it is prescribed as a panacea for all ills.

Studies purporting to show evidence for the success of cognitive behavioural therapy are flawed and untrustworthy. The statistics are a shambles. Huge drop-out rates are simply discounted. When someone can show me that, of every 100 people walking through the door marked CBT, a very large percentage emerges objectively, measurably better, and returns to something approaching its previous healthy life - able to return to work or school and stay better, without relapsing, for six months, 12 months, two years, five years . . . only then will I believe that cognitive behavioural therapy is worth talking about.

Dr John H Greensmith
MEFreeForAll.org
Bristol

Letter of the week: Why the banks will always win

Regulation will never remove the necessity for taxpayers to bail out banks when things go wrong; our regulators are too weak ("Everything you want to know about the bank crisis", 5 May). The activities of the banks will always impose a liability on the taxpayer.

To compensate the taxpayer for this, banks should be taxed proportionately to their borrowing exposure. A small percentage of the trillions they borrow would give a useful yield. Of course, their accountants will do their utmost to hide borrowings from the taxman. But if they then dare come to the Chancellor begging for a larger bailout than they have declared for tax purposes, we will at least have the satisfaction of imprisoning some bank directors for tax evasion.

David Cooper
Newbury, Berkshire

Aid or interfering?

Clare Short's letter (5 May) simply confirmed her own, small part in the huge tragedy of Zimbabwe. Although, elsewhere in Africa, the Department for International Development implicitly encourages the poor to leave the land, DfID policy was reversed in Zimbabwe. DfID aid palpably became a means of foreign interference. In April, Lord Malloch Brown, interviewed on BBC World, confirmed the paradox, regretting that, in Africa, Britain had for years substituted aid policy for foreign policy. The consequences in Africa and beyond have been disastrous. Foreign Office and DfID rivalry in Africa apparently contributed to Tony Blair's early removal of Robin Cook as foreign secretary. Had Cook remained at the Foreign Office, would Blair have dared go to war in Iraq, against the opposition of his two most senior cabinet ministers with overseas portfolios?

Howard Horsley
Much Wenlock, Shropshire

Rotten boroughs

As one who was brought up in Croydon and who regularly travels back there for work and social purposes, I must respond to the references to that borough in Brendan O'Neill's article "What's driving the BNP?" (5 May).

The northern part of Croydon has had a substantial non-white population for decades, but I have personally travelled on buses and trams there, and have rarely been the only white person in sight. Most of Croydon, incidentally, is predominantly white.

Charlotte Lewis, whom O'Neill portrays as a ditzy woman with a chip on her shoulder, is in fact a former candidate for the British National Party. She stood in the 2006 local elections for the St Helier council seat in Sutton, but was exposed for falsely claiming to live in the borough (a requirement) when she actually lives in Thornton Heath, in Croydon.

At least four other council candidates did the same during those elections.

Matthew J Smith
New Malden, Surrey

Modernist vision

Lynsey Hanley (Arts & Culture, 28 April) describes Kensal House as "an optimistic but ultimately doomed experiment in Czech-style communal living in London". A doomsayer she may be, yet I hesitate to argue that the verdict is still out.

SPID Theatre Company reclaimed the community rooms at Kensal House in 2005, and has revitalised the space, offering disadvantaged young Londoners on the council estate wraparound theatre and, through the dramatic process, fostering social cohesion.

Kensal House is recognised as an example of site-specific, community building in action, empowering residents on the estate and attracting a new audience through the open doors of what has fast become a true community theatre. Maxwell Fry's modernist vision may not yet have been realised, but it is most certainly still a work in progress.

David Russell
SPID Theatre Company
London W10

Clarification

Trade Bank of Iraq

On 13 March 2008 we published an article, "Follow the money", which made allegations about accounting procedures at the Trade Bank of Iraq. We now accept that there is no evidence to suggest that there has been any wrongdoing by the Trade Bank of Iraq or its chairman and we are happy to make that clear.