It is a clear expression of the corrupting effect of a corrupt and outdated electoral system. It was our good fortune to have a politician of Dr Owen’s stature to lead us. In those circumstances only a party of imbeciles would have wished to be led by anyone else.Professor King’s aberrant conclusion is that Labour’s conversion to Conservatism is a reflection of the spirit of the age This is sheer nonsense. Nor was the continuing SDP “dedicated to David Owen’s leadership”. We were, and more importantly still are, dedicated to Social Democracy.
It is also wrong to perpetuate the myth that the SDP merged with the then Liberal party Only a minority of SDP members voted for the merger. From Mr John Bates
Sir: As we gather in Weston-Super-Mare this weekend for our annual conference, the members of the Social Democratic Party will take with a pinch of salt yet another report of our demise (“The end of the Mad Hatters”, 16 November).
Professor King’s assessment of the problems of the SDP is scholarly enough but makes some false claims and draws some inaccurate conclusions.The SDP will certainly not have appeared to vanish without trace to those very many local electors who are still happily represented by SDP councillors around the country. As well as being expensive and stressful for families, temporary accommodation has been shown to have a profound impact on children’s education.All homeless families will suffer under the Government’s short-sighted proposals. Conservative ministers should not be allowed to get away with claiming that it is only single teenage mothers (who occupy fewer than 0-3 per cent of council properties) who will be hit.Yours sincerely,Diana MaddockMP for Christchurchand East Dorset (Lib Dem)House of CommonsLondon, SW1. What the Government is now proposing to do is reverse this by giving local authorities licence to put these families (of all kinds, single and double parent) into insecure, unstable temporary accommodation. As the law currently stands, they have equal priority with any other household that includes children, a pregnant woman or a disabled or elderly person. This means that if they are evicted or repossessed, they are automatically defined as “vulnerable” by local authorities and therefore prioritised for council housing.It was the l977 Homeless Persons Act, proposed by the then Liberal MP Stephen Ross, that first gave homeless families with children priority for secure housing tenancies.
From Ms Diana Maddock, MP
Sir: Your headline about the forthcoming Housing Bill, “Single parents to lose council house priority”, (16 November) is highly misleading.
Single parents do not have, and have never had, priority for council houses. Whether it could be improved to become a fully fledged high-speed line seems questionable. So my proposal also provides a method of providing a high-speed alternative to the West Coast Line between Rugby and London for domestic journeys.Yours sincerely,David SmithPrincipal Research OfficerSheffield City CouncilSheffield16 November. Built to the larger European loading gauge much freight could transfer from road to rail.The West Coast Line is badly in need of refurbishment. The first phase could link the new line immediately north of the Thames crossing at Rainham with Rugby on the West Coast Line.
Connections with the East Coast and Midland Lines could be made where it crosses them. In this way all major cities north of London could be connected directly to the European rail network. In Britain, only the new 68-mile route from London, St Pancras to the Channel tunnel is planned.
I would suggest that now is the right time to begin to consider a northwards extension of this new high-speed link. From Mr David Smith
Sir: Christian Wolmar is right to extol the virtues of high-speed rail travel, the particular benefits of city centre to city centre travel, and rail’s crucial role in helping to regenerate our large cities (“Trains signal start of ground battle with airlines”, 15 November). He refers to the extent of investment in new high-speed lines across Europe. Culture has its price as much as anything else, but the price, like most other things, must be relative.A city museum is not a stately home which one travels miles through the country to tour, nor is it a theatre or an opera house where one pays to see a complete performance, not simply ones favourite scene or aria – and where, incidentally, one pays more for a good seat than for a partial view.The V&A’s proposed fee is the equivalent of charging the same price for a seat in the gods as for the royal box.Yours faithfully,Peter ForsterLondon, N416 November.
We artists drop in to see a particular gallery or exhibit, or to check a specific reference.Ten pounds for a whole day or an afternoon amidst all the splendours of the V&A is not unreasonable (I love the place sufficiently to say that it is cheap), but for 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour it is just a bit steep, especially if the gallery one came to see is closed for the day or the exhibit is temporarily not on display.I am willing (and the museum at present takes my honesty on trust) to pay according to the time I have at my disposal or the time I need. It presupposes that we all visit a museum or art gallery under exactly the same conditions, as if we were all tourists cramming in everything (or as much as possible) in one fell swoop, “doing” the sight and ticking it off in our Blue Guides.
We Londoners visit our museums during our lunch breaks, in the course of our shopping expeditions, or en route between appointments. From Mr Peter Forster
Sir: The Victoria and Albert Museum’s proposal to impose a compulsory pounds 10 entrance fee fills this London artist with dismay (“V&A director wants pounds 10 admission fee”, 16 November). From Mr David Whiting
Sir: The British theatre is all the poorer, with the death of Robert Stephens (“Stage mourns loss of great ‘Lear’ “, and obituaries/gazette, 14 November).
To see him as King Lear, at Stratford, was a truly moving experience, and one I shall never forget.His acting had an extraordinary gravity and a certain grandeur; here was a man bringing to bear the weight of his life’s experience in a great tragic role, and the sheer power of his delivery in the storm scene was remarkable.Such was the strength of his presence, that it seemed to be felt even when he was off-stage, a kind of brooding intensity that filled you with anticipation for his return.It is a happy story that after the wilderness of the Eighties, this actor “came home” so triumphantly in the Nineties, and the British theatre rediscovered one of its greatest actors.Yours faithfully,David WhitingHampton Lovett,Worcestershire13 November. It is also the date when Neapolitans don their winter garb, whatever the actual temperature.It certainly made a bizarre sight.
