Letters: The Conservatives now face a long battle to unite a party riven by factions

Pubs turning a profit
 

SIR - Stewart H Macdonald (Letters, July 4) suggests a reduction in the VAT rate for the hospitality industry, to support ailing businesses. Sadly, I don’t think this plan will help the situation much. 

Any VAT reduction will result in the pub-chain owners pocketing more cash, not the required reduction in pub prices. With most pubs charging nearly £5 a pint, a trip to the local is a rare treat for most people these days. 

It is interesting that some Wetherspoon pubs charge about half that amount for a pint and still make a profit. I think the problem lies with the pub-chain owners, not the VAT rate.

Robert Jewell
Nottingham

Cancer bell ceremony

SIR – I note the letter from Rob Williamson (July 5), who suggests that the “bell ceremony” after completing cancer treatment should be abolished.

My late wife was treated at the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre for six years and it was apparent from the start that her condition was terminal. Some years after her death, I began to volunteer there, doing what I could to help patients. I heard the bell many times and asked one patient whose condition was terminal whether the bell should be abolished.
She replied that while she would never ring it herself, it helped others to get through gruelling chemotherapy, so she was all for it.

Shortly afterwards, I returned to Clatterbridge as a patient. She was right.

Noel Radcliffe
Chester 

Worth the thorns

SIR – I agree with Graham Ashen (Letters, July 3) when he states that gooseberries are bitter and the bushes are thorny, but liberally sprinkled with sugar and baked under a crumble topping, they make a delicious pudding. 

Sadly, I rarely see them for sale.

Barbara Smith
Stafford

SIR – I have no problem picking gooseberries in my garden. Wearing stout gardening gloves, I hold the branch with one hand and strip the berries downwards into a plastic bucket, leaving any small ones behind for future ripening. 

I can pick 2 lb in a matter of minutes, ready for a delicious gooseberry fool, crumble or pie.

Christine Hoskins
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

Building more houses

SIR – Labour has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years. Last year we built 220,000 new homes, so Labour’s plans mean a 35 per cent increase in output.

Where is the immediate 35 per cent increase in building materials going to come from? Where will the increase in bricklayers, joiners, electricians, and plasterers come from?

Planning permission for large developments can take over a year to be approved. It can take another year for the logistics to be arranged. It is more likely that Labour will need to build 500,000 houses per year to meet this target. Impossible.

Andrew Holgate
Wilmslow, Cheshire

SIR – Will building more and more houses really solve the housing problem? Near where I live a large estate is under construction. However, building work had to stop because the properties were not selling.

Unaffordable bricks and mortar are not necessarily the answer. Surely with today’s materials and modern construction techniques there must be some way of building houses quicker and cheaper so that young people can afford them.

Margaret Wilson
Ferndown, Dorset

Antique treats

SIR – Sophia Money-Coutts challenges readers to name “the oldest tin or jar of something loitering in your cupboard” (Saturday, June 29). When I was ten years old my father took me in 1951 to visit a family in Aachen, Germany. Family friends of theirs arranged for us a guided tour of the Trumpf chocolate factory. On our departure we were presented with two boxes of their products.

As chocolate was still on ration in Britain this was a big treat. The boxes themselves were works of art in the form of little drawers with gold tassels and velvet tops. One box my mother left untouched. The other empty box she used to store bits and pieces.

When she died in 2002 there were the chocolates, looking as fresh as the day we brought them home. On a Rhine river cruise I’d noticed a chocolate museum on the river bank. I donated them to the museum which in return sent me a box of the products sold in the museum shop.

I have never visited the museum but the curator was very pleased to receive them and hopefully they have been enjoyed by visitors.

Margaret Moorcroft
Grimsby, Lincolnshire

A seaside town takes pride in its appearance

SIR – Allison Pearson’s account of her visit to Frinton/Clacton (Features, July 3) reminds me of a holiday I had there over 75 years ago. 

Frinton was even then regarded as the posh side of Clacton. I was standing on the railway platform and dropped a matchstick. The station master came up to me and said: “Please don’t drop litter, we are very proud of our station.” How times have changed.

Peter Jeffries 
Haddenham, Buckinghamshire

No electoral system beats first-past-the-post

SIR – Here we go again. Nigel Farage wants to have proportional representation so that Reform UK gains more seats (report, July 6). Labour wants to give the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds. The Conservatives have given the vote to expats and weakened the home voters’ power. We must stop them playing fast and loose with the system to gain an advantage. 

It is the sacred duty of the public to elect the best candidates, which can only be achieved with a first-past-the-post voting system. Nothing else counts.

David Pigott
Bournemouth, Dorset

SIR – First-past-the-post is wonderful in its clarity. We have been able to punish a badly performing government in a way that it will never forget, not only by sacking many of its members, but also by giving its opponents a clear run at government.

Proportional representation would have given us a confusing result and indecisive government.

Christopher Rose
Sunderland, Co Durham

SIR – For a country the size of the United Kingdom, 650 seats is excessive. 

Assuming that we continue to have the full 650 seats, I suggest that we should have 550 constituency seats (each constituency therefore being slightly larger) elected as now. The remaining 100 seats would be filled in exact proportion to the percentage of the total vote achieved by each party, and would be awarded from a pool of candidates set up by each party and chosen by each party. These MPs would represent the total electorate rather than a specific constituency. 
The same formula would work for any total number of seats. 

The result would be to ameliorate the ridiculous present situation where Party A could get more total votes than Party B but achieve fewer than a tenth of the number of seats gained by Party B on a lower number of total votes cast. 

Conventional PR is full of dreadful tiger traps and this idea might have some validity without the attendant risks.

Neale Edwards
Chard, Somerset

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