Letter of the week: Bring in the big guns

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Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, Britain has tended to regard defence spending as either an unaffordable luxury or a hangover from the days of empire. Andrew Marr (Politics, 7 February) clearly takes the contrary view, believing not only that there is a threat from Russia (and perhaps China), but that without a hike in spending to at least 2.5 per cent of GDP, the US, EU and Nato will no longer take us seriously.

As for what is required, we need more destroyers and frigates, and at least two new amphibious assault ships. Our two aircraft carriers need proper onboard defence systems. The nuclear deterrent should be scrapped. The Royal Marines should be at least 10,000-strong and the SAS doubled in size. The British Army must increase its full-time personnel to 100,000. The RAF could do with more fighters and long-range surveillance aircraft but is, comparatively, the best provided of the services. Lastly, the UK needs a functioning missile defence screen.

I have no idea what all of this would cost. A lot. The impact on domestic spending would be considerable. But what is the alternative?
Walter Ellis, Plusquellec, France

Back to schools

Francis Green and David Kynaston claim that fee increases at independent schools following Labour’s imposition of VAT “will render a socially exclusive system a touch more exclusive” (Cover Story, 31 January). They ignore the many small independent schools that are almost unknown outside their localities but greatly cherished within them. More than 1,000 independent schools, 40 per cent of the total, have fewer than 100 pupils. Jewish and Muslim schools, charging fees of around £3,000 a year, are among them. Other small schools supplement the state’s provision for special needs, now in deep crisis, by giving some 100,000 children, for whom no public money is available, an education that meets their requirements at a cost families have been able to afford. Those who denounce the famous “public schools” as bastions of privilege should stop depicting them as typical of the sector.
Alistair Lexden, president of the Independent Schools Association (representing 700 small schools), House of Lords

What Green and Kynaston are proposing with their “preferred reforming emphasis” is, I think, close to a return to the direct grant system in place until the 1980s. I went to a direct grant school in Worcester. It was a mix of privileged pupils and local talent from all backgrounds. It stopped the former getting too big for their boots and allowed the latter to grow beyond what they may otherwise have achieved.
Imagine how dismayed I felt, returning recently, to see the now exclusively fee-paying pupils enjoying a boathouse, a theatre worthy of a small town, an art block worthy of a university, and many acres more playing fields than when I was there. Great that pupils can enjoy such things, but it contrasts desperately with state-school secondary education. Green and Kynaston did not outline how such integration would take place. My school took the best of the 11-plus pupils. Finding an equitable way of bringing across worthy pupils would be the challenge.
Mark Meyrick, Bristol

Whatever good points they may have contained, the letters (Correspondence, 7 February) in response to Green and Kynaston’s proposals for reforming private schools all seemed to be premised on the idea that the advantages conferred on children by private schooling are chiefly educational, when they are chiefly social.
In Born to Rule: The Making and Re-making of the British Elite, Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman demonstrate that the private-school system has worked to maintain a social hierarchy in place since the Public Schools Act of 1866. The actual education offered is almost beside the point. Indeed, the meagre resources of state schools do not seem to prevent their alumni achieving better degrees than the privately educated. Nor do the correspondents address the question of whether it is conducive to the common good to allow the children of the rich to be educated separately from the rest. Instead of following the “baby steps” approach advocated by Green and Kynaston, we should study the way Finland reformed its system in the 1970s.
Michael Pyke, the Campaign for State Education

Eliott Lockhart accuses us of hating private schools (Correspondence, 7 February). We don’t. In fact, we admire many of them for the quality of education that they provide. What we hate is the fundamental unfairness and damaging consequences of our system, which allows the rich to buy a privileged, hugely more resourced education, separated from the rest. There are no easy answers to this blight in our society. But surely it is time to do something about it.
Francis Green and David Kynaston

Medical red tape

I read with interest Hannah Barnes’s thoughtful article “The Do No Harm dilemma” (Special Report, 7 February). Whether it is assisted dying, medicinal cannabis or obesity, it can feel that our choices are constrained by experts. Sometimes this is a matter of financial restrictions, but more often it is regulators.
At the Epilepsy Society, we recognise the complexity and sensitivity of the choices that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) must make. But surely that makes the fullest possible consultation essential? No one quoted in the article felt the MHRA had done enough to engage with stakeholders on the issue of valproate prescribed to men with epilepsy.
If I were their chief executive, that would give me sleepless nights. And if I were the Health Secretary, I would be on the phone right now asking for an explanation.
Clare Pelham, chief executive, Epilepsy Society

Me and Ms Jones

I loved Tanya Gold’s pricking of the Bridget Jones bubble (The Critics, 7 February), to which I shamefully succumbed in the 1990s. But in the same spirit of feminism, I am sorry she traduced the first Mrs Rochester. Jean Rhys’s magnificent Wide Sargasso Sea reclaims Antoinette’s character and dignity, giving us the redemption of a woman badly mistreated by her menfolk.
Sue Lloyd, Bristol

Those in glass aeroplanes

As an expat New Yorker living in Britain, I was horrified to read Simon Armitage on New York’s environmental Armageddon (Nature, 7 February). I must ask, however, how Armitage got to New York. My partner and I gave up flying in 2007 – precisely the reason I’ve been unable to visit friends and family in my native city for almost 20 years.
Jill Haas, Oxford

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[See also: Letter of the week: Class dismissed]