Werner Franz, survivor of the Hindenburg disaster Photo: AP

WERNER FRANZ, who has died aged 92, was thought to be the last surviving crew member of the Hindenburg, the huge German airship that exploded and crashed in the first major disaster in American aviation history.

As a 14-year-old cabin boy, Werner Franz was the youngest member of the Hindenburg’s 60-strong crew when the hydrogen-filled Zeppelin caught fire and crashed at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6 1937. Of the 97 people on board, 36 passengers and crew and one person on the ground were killed when the airship crashed in an enormous fireball.

The Hindenburg disaster was captured by waiting photographers, film crews and a radio commentator on the ground, making it one of history’s most vividly reported air accidents.

_{Hindenburg bursting into flames on May 6 1937}

Named after the German president who appointed Hitler chancellor in 1933, the Hindenburg airship was a spectacular — and expensive — form of transport that could cross the Atlantic westbound in less than three days, at a time when even the swiftest ocean liners could take up to a week or more. As such it was also a powerful propaganda tool of the Nazi regime.

Having made its maiden voyage more than a year earlier, the Hindenburg had made 62 safe flights before its destruction. Werner had made four round-trip transatlantic crossings, to both North and South America, and had become familiar with the airship’s internal network of narrow wooden passageways that connected bow to stern, a distance of more than 800ft — almost the length of the Titanic.

He had been clearing the dinner dishes in the officer’s mess when, at 7.25pm, he heard a thud and felt the airship shake. The Hindenburg lurched, and its nose began tilting upwards. “Directly overhead there were flames,” Werner Franz remembered.

One memorable photograph of the disaster shows the airship buckling as a fireball rises from its back. Near the nose of the ship, what looks like a spray of water escaping was actually a torrent from the Hindenburg’s ruptured water tanks. Werner Franz believed that getting drenched when they burst protected him from the flames and heat and may have saved his life.

“At first I was shocked, but the water brought me back,” he recalled at a commemoration ceremony in 2004. Gripping both sides of a picture window as the airship sank towards the ground, he kicked open a service hatch used to load provisions, swung his feet out and jumped. He can be seen in newsreel footage of the disaster, leaping the few feet to the ground, and running for his life. “I was doing it instinctively. I didn’t think,” he said.

His timing could hardly have been better. The airship was just low enough to allow Franz to land on a canvas ballast bag, which cushioned his fall, but high enough for him to dash beneath the port side of the airship before it collapsed on the ground in a burning mass. Having jumped clear of the Hindenburg, Franz ran for his life away from the blazing wreckage, as the flames were driven in his direction by the wind. As a result he escaped with singed eyebrows and soaking wet clothes; otherwise he had barely a scratch.

_{The young Werner Franz with one of his fellow survivors, Heinrich Kubis, who was serving as chief steward on the flight}

Werner Franz was born in Frankfurt on May 22 1922. As a 14 year-old he landed his job on the Hindenburg quite by chance. His brother worked in a hotel where the passengers gathered before boarding the airship, and when the Zeppelin Company asked the hotel for a boy to serve the officers, Werner was chosen. The experience was an eye-opener for a boy from a humble background. His job was to make beds, set tables, wash dishes and clean uniforms, but for a brief few months he saw the world in a way usually enjoyed only by the airship’s affluent passengers. As well as huge picture windows affording breathtaking views, the Hindenburg offered passengers gourmet German and French cuisine to the musical accompaniment of an aluminium baby grand piano.

Although Werner worked a 14-hour day serving the officers’ meals and attending to their cabins, he was allowed to take breaks during which he could enjoy the spectacular panorama below. He would often visit the mechanics who manned the engines or the riggers who worked at the top of the airship. On the day of the disaster, he climbed up to his favourite small window for a bird’s-eye view of New York City, gazing over Manhattan’s “ocean of buildings far and wide” as the Hindenburg circled overhead, waiting for local thunderstorms to abate at Lakehurst.

But as the fireball exploded, Franz was busy on the mess deck and not at his preferred observation point further forward, where other crewmen waiting to prepare the ship for landing were incinerated by flames bursting through the nose.

The day after the disaster, as a US Navy search team picked through the smoking wreckage, Werner Franz asked them to look for his pocket-watch, a present from his grandfather. It was found amid the debris, a mangled scrap of blackened metal but still ticking.

Although sabotage was initially suspected, no convincing evidence of a plot to destroy the airship was ever found. A build-up of static electricity that ignited a hydrogen leak is now believed to be a possible explanation for the disaster.

During the Second World War, Franz served as a radio operator and instructor in the Luftwaffe. After the war he worked as a precision engineer for the German postal service and was also a skating coach.

Werner Franz, who considered his few months’ service aboard the Hindenburg as the happiest time of his life, is survived by his wife, Annerose, and several children. At least one other survivor of the disaster, Werner Doehner, then eight years old and who was thrown out of the stricken airship by his mother, is thought to be still living.

Werner Franz, born May 22 1922, died August 13 2014

There is already an English standing committee of the House of Commons (If home rule is good enough for Scotland, it should be good enough for England too, 20 September). If you want English votes for English laws then do it in the committee stage. Have the English committee meet in the House of Commons one or two days a week. We can do this now and need no constitutional change to bring this about. We do not need a separate English parliament to bring this about or a separate English executive.
Nigel Boddy
Darlington

• As Gordon Reece rightly says (Letters, 22 September) the logic of preventing Scots MPs from voting on English matters is that only women should vote on women’s issues etc. But there’s surely a wider constitutional issue. We’ve spent months successfully persuading the people of Scotland that we’re better together. Yet we now plan to tell their representatives that they can only contribute to debate on matters affecting some parts of our supposedly “United” Kingdom. They’d be right to suspect that “together” didn’t quite mean what we led them to believe.
David Robertson
West Malvern, Worcestershire

• We used to have devolved government in England (Cameron faces pressure over home rule deal, 22 September). It was called local government and it had powers to levy taxes dependent on local need – rates. The Tories eviscerated it in the 1980s because councils did not agree with central government. We don’t need regional parliaments. We need local government with real powers.
Gary Hogben
Moreton, Wirral

• The problem at Westminster is not that Scottish MPs can vote on English matters whereas English MPs cannot vote on purely Scottish matters. Scottish MPs cannot vote on purely Scottish matters either, because there is a more appropriate forum where those matters are decided. There is no such forum for English matters. Voters in Scotland elect councillors to decide purely local matters, MSPs to decide regional matters and MPs to decide national matters. To dismiss the notion of having an English parliament (or regional assemblies) as simply adding another layer of politicians is to miss the whole point of devolution: to move power nearer to the people affected by political decisions.
Robin Gardner
West Bridgford, Nottingham

• How can David Cameron, having seen turnout of 85%+ in Scotland, think that the “English question” can be settled by a few Westminster politicians in a matter of months? We need a debate over years, not months, not about the intricacies of the West Lothian question, or Ukip’s sour complaint about English taxpayers’ subsidy, but about a radical devolution of power to local areas, to reflect England’s scale and diversity. Within living memory the city of Carlisle ran both its electricity supply and its pubs – an indication of how far local authority powers have shrunk.

A debate about which powers, and what is local, would wake up England. “Localistas” like me would argue that Manchester and Margate require locally led labour-market and skills policies, and local control over minimum wages. “Centralisers” would worry about small-town corruption and postcode lotteries. Localistas would counter with a gradual transfer of powers as local capacity builds up. And so forth. But it needs all the Westminster parties to abide by whatever consultation or referendum results comes out.

We really are at a turning point. This is an opportunity to get the English voting again. Let’s hope politicians rise to the challenge.
Carolyn Hayman
London

• The way to spike the neoliberal guns is not so very difficult (Beware the hijacking of reform, 22 September): whatever powers are devolved to Scotland should also be devolved to English local authorities. Too simple? Too obvious? Why?

Health and education are what most voters care most about, as well as being the departments being given away (to privatising forces). You just have to change who you are giving the power to – namely, back to the people, whether of Scotland, Manchester, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Lansley and his lot have already prepared the NHS for a carve-up, and Gove’s work in education was so bad that no recent work done in that area would constitute a loss.

Working out how to have a fair legal system for England will take more time, but giving control of health and education to local governance seems a great start to devolving power to the millions of English, Welsh and Northern Irish people who want to feel relevant again in democratic political processes.
Peter Cawley
Halifax

• I suggest that there be just one class of UK MPs with dual roles: they would sit in Westminster (alternating with the other capitals) as the House of Commons for two to three days a fortnight dealing with supranational UK matters, and in their home parliaments for the rest of the time, focusing onEnglish/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish devolved powers and their constituents.

This system allows English home rule and requires each national parliament to help run the greater UK, so taking their proper share of responsibility for the UK as a whole. An added advantage is the money saved through losing the current non-English Westminster MPs. The hardest problem would be choosing the prime minister, who would be more presidential than now: they would run the macro-economy, foreign affairs and defence, with pretty much everything else devolved to the national governments.The easiest solution is for MPs to elect one of their number.

And, given the much diminished role of the House of Commons, would this system really need the House of Lords revising chamber? The Northern Irish and Welsh parliaments seem to get along fine without a second chamber, as does the Scottish one, and it makes its own laws. The vacated House of Lords would make an ideal, readymade home for the English parliament.
Jonathan Bard
Oxford

• We shouldn’t get too misty-eyed about devolution as the panacea to our political ills (A big moment that demands a big response; 20 September). A bigger challenge has to be tackled first: the need to root out “old corruption”. In the 18th century, financial, commercial and political elites meshed together to feed parasitically off the growing wealth of the state. It went beyond Westminster, capturing the professions and a whole host of apparently non-political areas of life. Contemporaries felt that the “rapacious economic spirit” of the age pervaded all aspects of society: economics, politics and morality. Sound familiar?

Its disappearance around the middle of the 19th century was down to reforming governments that reconstructed the state to protect the public interest and laid the foundation for regulatory and collective state provision.

A decade ago David Marquand highlighted the return of old corruption in his book The Decline of the Public. It was driven by “the cronyism and clientelism spawned by the privatisation” of the previous 25 years.

It has continued apace: accountancy companies that write tax legislation for government simultaneously provide advice to clients about how to avoid the tax regulations they have drafted; outsourcing giants, Serco and G4S, at the centre of serious fraud inquiries granted new government work; the revolving door between Westminster, Whitehall and the private sector spins faster; profitable public assets sold for a song; companies involved in the privatisation of education and the NHS (to name but two areas of the shrinking public domain) reflects a similar meshing of political and financial interests that would have been familiar to those adept at drawing off largesse from the 18th-century state.

If these issues are not tackled, old corruption will extend its lease on our faltering political institutions: devolved or not.
Councillor Alan Waters (Labour)
Deputy leader, Norwich city council

• Scottish MPs are to be banned from voting on “English issues”. What about unelected Scottish peers in the House of Lords? Presumably Tom Strathclyde (Scottish hereditary baron) and David Steel (former Scottish MP) will be banned, but what about the Countess of Mar, a Scottish hereditary peerage held by a cheese-maker from Worcestershire? Rather than tinkering with an illogical system, we need to embark on fundamental constitutional reform to federalism.
Andrea Woelke
London

• Surely it would be timely to rename the Bank of England as Bank UK. The assets contained in the Bank of England are proportionately the property of the people of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland as well as England.

Come on, Dave. Betray your tribe.
Thomas Jenkin
Penzance, Cornwall

• Symmetrical devolution across the UK is superficially attractive. The problem is that the idea of “English votes for English laws” is not symmetrical if it involves simply giving additional powers to English MPs elected to the existing Westminster parliament.

The Scottish (and Welsh and Northern Irish) assemblies are elected by voters explicitly voting for representatives who are collectively responsible for delivering defined devolved powers within their geographical areas. Those assemblies are also elected by a form of proportional representation.

By contrast, English MPs at Westminster are elected by the first-past-the-post system. And giving English MPs at Westminster the exclusive right to enact English legislation would be to provide them with two distinct roles: enacting English laws and controlling the creation of the UK-wide government.

What would electors in England be voting for? An MP whose function would be to enact English laws, to appoint and oversee a future UK government, or both? How would voters distinguish between those distinct functions when deciding how to cast their votes in an election? Is it self-evident that an elector would want to vote for a representative of the same political persuasion for both functions?

There is an arguable case for English devolution, but if it happens it should be on the same model as for the three other nations: a separate national assembly elected by proportional representation. It should not be by creating a second and ambiguous role for English MPs in Westminster.
Richard Williams
Kingston, Surrey

• I would like to offer up the following two-part solution to the West Lothian question and the broader UK constitutional fallout from last week’s Scottish referendum. The first part of the solution would be to turn the House of Commons into an English parliament, composed solely of English MPs, to vote solely on English domestic law. In the political hierarchy, this English parliament (still called the House of Commons if needs be) would sit alongside the existing Scottish parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies.

The second part of the solution would be to turn the House of Lords into a wholly elected upper chamber of members elected from across the UK. This reformed version of the House of Lords would hold sway on non-devolved matters (such as wars, defence and foreign policy), debate UK-wide issues, refer issues for debate by the regional assemblies, have the ability to issue non-binding “think-agains” to the regional parliaments and would adjudicate in instances of dispute regarding whether an issue is devolved or not. Members of this reformed House of Lords would carry the title Lord, but only for the duration of their office.
Dr Mark Campbell-Roddis
Dunblane, Perthshire

• Irvine Welsh (20 September) is right when he says that “imposing an unwanted parliament in Norwich on East Anglian folks would be as undemocratic as taking away the Scots one in Edinburgh”. The solution that is starting to emerge is different: city-regions. Drastically strengthened local government in places such as the Norwich and Cambridge city-areas could well be popular here.

The key point is that we need real decentralisation from Westminster – which Cameron’s proposals or an English parliament alike are designed not to deliver. It should be up to a citizens’ deliberative constitutional convention to sort out exactly what model of decentralisation to implement. And what is encouraging is that Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage and Caroline Lucas have all come out in favour of creating such a convention.

Will the Lib Dems join this remarkable coalition, or will they back Cameron’s shabby elite-centred short-term fix?
Dr Rupert Read
School of politics, philosophy and languages, University of East Anglia

• It took David Cameron a little less than an hour to set out his new agenda after the results were declared, overriding the debate and all of the promises of the past four weeks. Cameron’s argument for English devolution is now being taken up by several lobbyists, for instance ResPublica, which will be lobbying all three party conferences. ResPublica is peddling a decentralisation/devolution agenda. It wants a devolution of powers not just in local and regional government but also in the public services, notably the health service. This is likely to result in fragmentation: allowing each region to take control, at short notice, while tightening still further their central government funding, with the result that the large corporate providers will step in to bridge any gaps in provision. In other words, it may easily turn out to be a new strategy for continued privatisation of the health and other public services.

I hope the Labour party will show a little less timidity and face up to this opportunistic gambit (Owen Jones, 22 September) with a structured proposal for federalism within the UK that is long-lasting and not just tactical.
David Edgeworth
Woodford Green, Essex

• Martin Rowson’s cartoon with its English Laws for Global Corporations flag and Nigel Farage leading the parade was the only part of the Guardian that really grasped who were the real beneficiaries of the Scottish referendum (20 September). This devolution frenzy now gripping politicians and your paper appears to mistakenly imagine that the country’s ills can be dealt with simply by devolving rights and powers within the UK. Yet it is just a delusional rearranging of the deckchairs on a Titanic sailing through a sea of free-market icebergs, all steered by Steve Bell’s fat cats. These are what dictate the limits of our economic freedom, not how we organise ourselves internally.

Farage will be the major beneficiary from this devolution obsession since it will add one more trump card to the two strong hands he already has to play in the runup to the election – immigration and austerity. Other than Ukip, all national parties, including the Greens, support open EU borders. Farage supports austerity, but can say “so do all big political parties”, albeit with policies ranging from austerity-lite to austerity-cruel. There seems to be no sign of a national political party rejecting both appeasement to the market and open EU borders. Until they do, it’ll be politics as usual.
Colin Hines
Author of Progressive Protectionism (published autumn 2014)

• It would appear that some of the same politicians who were bewailing the potential break-up of the UK if Scotland had voted for independence seem more than happy to advocate the break-up of England into separate regions.

No doubt these politicians are aware of several opinion polls over the past few years showing over 60% support for an English parliament (eg an ICM poll in November 2006 showing 68% support and a BBC poll in January 2007 showing 61%). On the other hand, the referendum for a north-east regional assembly in 2004 resulted in an overwhelming 78% rejection.

There really is only one way to settle this debate. It is time the people of England were offered a fair referendum on whether we want an English parliament, regional assemblies, both or neither.
Simon Cowley
Nottingham

• Both the 1964 and 1974 elections (which we are told are the only ones where the results would have been different) ended periods of Conservative rule. After both elections Harold Wilson was able to call a snap election at an opportune time and secure a larger majority. It is doubtful that he would have been in power at all without Scottish MPs. We could have had almost five decades of uninterrupted Conservative rule. Be careful what is agreed about Scottish MPs.
Will Douglas-Mann
Petrockstowe, Devon

For the past few weeks, since the floods, a Kashmiri friend of mine in Srinagar has been living with his wife, son, mother and grandmother on the floor of his local mosque – his house was destroyed by a wall of water he said was like a tsunami. Thousands are homeless and people are dying; the NGOs in the area are doing what they can to help, but the Indian government has done nothing – at the same time as it’s managed to find £45m to send a spaceship to Mars (Report, 25 September).
Liz Turner
London

• If India can spend £45m on such a project, why are we continuing to include them in our aid programme?
Edward Thomas
Eastbourne, East Sussex

Simon Jenkins is absolutely right to underline the fundamental difference between humanitarian and political or military intervention (Finally, the west is acting on Ebola. What took us so long?, 19 September). It is also true that humanitarian relief work currently faces unprecedented challenges, often as a result of being seen as linked to one side or another in conflict and other disasters. But it does not follow from this that the humanitarian ethic of the Red Cross has diminished, nor that the impartiality of our founders has been “swamped in the rush to war”. Whether in Syria or Sierra Leone, the Red Cross Red Crescent movement can and does deliver vital assistance every day without political, military or religious influence.

We have been responding to the Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since its very beginning and now have 2,500 volunteers working to prevent its spread across the three countries. They are part of a worldwide movement which delivers aid on the basis of greatest need. This often involves considerable danger, manifested tragically in Syria (where we are among the few humanitarian agencies able to work across frontlines) in the deaths of 37 Syrian Arab Red Crescent workers while carrying out their work.

The biggest threat to our humanitarian mission is being perceived as anything less than neutral, independent and impartial, which can lead to being unable to safely access those in need. This is why in conflict situations we make repeated calls for all parties to ensure quick and unimpeded access for humanitarian aid workers. The decision to provide humanitarian assistance must be driven by need only and regardless of “national security”. For this reason, it is imperative that the concept of humanitarianism is understood correctly.
Mike Adamson
Acting chief executive, British Red Cross

• I’ve seen plenty of coverage of the faltering attempts to combat the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa recently. We’ve all read about the budget cuts at the World Health Organisation that are hampering the response, and the urgent need, articulated by Dr Margaret Chan, the director general of the WHO, for “an army of experts and health workers to combat an outbreak overtaking some of the world’s poorest countries”. Once again, Cuba has stepped forward with 62 volunteer doctors and 103 nurses, all with post-catastrophe experience. Over the past 50 years Cuba has sent more than 300,000 health workers to 158 countries, even offering humanitarian aid to the US – which has tried to bring Cuba to its knees over the past 55 years by its illegal trade blockade – when hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Simon Jenkins, to his credit, made a passing reference to Cuba’s initiative in his column, but, apart from that, Cuba’s medical volunteers seem to be totally invisible to our media. Isn’t it time we gave them the credit they so definitely deserve?
Ed Glasson
Bracknell, Berkshire

In addition to the alternatives your correspondents propose of moving jobs away from London and the south and redirecting infrastructure spending (Letters, 24 September), there is a third pressing problem: jobs and affordable housing within London are getting further apart. Low- and middle-income people are being forced out of central and inner London by a mixture of housing costs and eviction from social housing estates, while employment in many outer-London areas is declining because land can so much more profitably be switched to use for speculative housing from industrial, office and retail use. These switches are the result of the government’s ideological commitment to “deregulation” through removing planning controls and creating “permitted development rights”, together with continuing failure by London boroughs and mayors of London to use the planning system adequately to protect employment.

These are issues on which a wide spectrum of businesses and community groups in the London Forum and Just Space networks have made strong representations to successive mayoral plans without having any impact at all. A tougher approach to protecting suburban employment would shorten trips for workers in all income groups and reduce London’s insatiable demands for infrastructure. While we wait for a new mayor, we all need to tell the department for communities and local government to reverse its proposed expansion of permitted development rights for London and the south-east before its consultation closes at the end of October.
Michael Edwards
UCL Bartlett School of Planning

• I agree with Richard Mountford with mixed feelings. I am grateful that so many people are prepared to live in the overcrowded London and the south-east because it leaves the rest of the country to be enjoyed by us sensible ones! Mr Mountford should add London universities to his list of institutions to be moved. The University of London has over 170,000 students, plus staff and facilities management. Moving it to a more suitable place would increase the availability of rented accommodation and enable youngsters to realise life exists outside London. Given that Oxford, Cambridge, York and Durham are examples of prestigious universities outside London, there can be no excuse for having such a large university in the centre of London, adding to its transport and housing problems.
Brian Keegan
Peterborough

If some Luton police officers did not wish to appear in Channel 4’s reality TV show because they were paying child maintenance and did not want their former partners to know they had been promoted (Report, 23 September), we – and the Child Maintenance Service – must hope that their ex-partners are not claiming extra benefits.
Jill Adams
Birmingham

• Jeff Lewis (Letters, 24 September) is right to speculate that parish authorities clamping down on “inconstancies”, as sex outside marriage was known, led to their epithet of “bawdy courts”. However, if Germaine Greer is to believed, the unintended consequences were that many young women fled the ignominy of public punishment to seek new lives in the bawdy houses of London, where they became the models for Shakespeare’s sex workers such as Doll Tearsheet and Mistress Quickly.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire

• Cancer is diagnosed late (22 September): “Urgent improvements … would save the NHS millions of pounds a year through reduced chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, as well as enhancing many cancer sufferers’ chances of survival”. Love the order of priority here.
Deb Tanner (cancer patient)
London

• Why is your obituary of a woman who looked after a big house larger than that of a man who helped to save thousands of lives (The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire; Ronald Grainger, both 25 September)?
Peter Brooker
West Wickham, Kent

• May I congratulate you on your splendid Orwellian slogan: Labour must invest in health prevention (Letters, 23 September).
Gerry Abbott
Manchester

• I assume that the migrating wildebeest in your picture (Eyewitness, 24 September) are seeking gnu pastures.
David Evans
Chester

Samantha Morton (‘Nobody would have believed me. I thought they were the coolest, nicest people’, Weekend, 13 September) questions the place of private finance in the care of children. Government data shows that there is the same range of quality no matter who runs children’s homes.

The provision of care for young people with the highest levels of needs, as in children’s homes, is now complex. Samantha Morton is right, there is a social duty of care but it seems to be happening less and less.

Financial thinking is now integral to decision-making by local authorities about a placement. Costs can outweigh care in their reasoning by a ratio of 80%:20%. The costs of independent providers are scrutinised closely. One regional group has a proposal to pay less than it costs to staff a home.

In England 78% of homes are in the independent sector. This is a sector of solo and small providers: 45% own just one home; a further 19% own two, usually started because they saw an unmet need or because they saw how they can “do things better”. The ‘“big money”, which may be the group Samantha Morton is commenting on, own less than one fifth, an amount that looks like it will not rise further, not reaching the density that we see in adult care or in independent fostering.

The reality of residential childcare today is that if you didn’t do it out of commitment, you wouldn’t at all; there’s more money elsewhere in other jobs, and returns from investing in other forms of children’s care.

The reality of residential childcare is of a sector that is, despite underfunding, putting its house in order. Providers have completed their reforms as directed. However, six months after regulation was in place and now some six weeks after further guidance, many other agencies, including local authorities, are still to complete their associated safeguarding reforms designed to be supportive of children’s homes.

No doubt a large cause of the delays come from the reforms, costing money that local authorities do not have. The reforms have cost children’s homes providers thousands of pounds.

The children’s homes sector is without hope that whatever it does or says will be recognised as positive. We have tried; we have had the almost unanimous views of those doing the job dismissed, excluded. We are holding on, waiting for better times but with a deep dread that they will not be coming – knowing there are yet more reforms to be proposed, probably imposed, soon.
Jonathan Stanley
Chief executive, Independent Children’s Homes Association

Sir, The hook on which our Conservative-led government hung all its subsequent severe cuts to our armed forces — leaving us with the bare rump of a navy with no strike carriers, and an air force with an ever-diminishing inventory of fighting aircraft — was the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. When that review looked at the threats facing this country, did it list the coming threat from Isis, the threat to Crimea, eastern Ukraine and the Baltic states, to Nigeria and Libya? And if not, why not?

Or was that review just a cost-cutting exercise designed to provide a fig leaf to the coming cuts? And when the defence experts foresaw the unexpected as being the greatest threat, did the Treasury tell them that budgeting for the unexpected was a no-go area?
Rear Admiral Conrad Jenkin
West Meon, Hants

Sir, In the discussion about the campaign of air strikes against Isil guerrillas in northern Iraq three key issues have not been fully addressed:

First, Turkey, the one Muslim state that is a member of Nato, must be helped to cope with the massive flow of refugees from Iraq and Syria, not only financially, but if the Turkish government agrees, also, by volunteers with experience in the work of caring for them.

Second, the rules of engagement for forces involved in air strikes should make it clear that civilians must be protected as far as possible. More air strikes against people already terrorised by Isil, such as the Kurds in northern Iraq, will alienate those whose support is crucial.

Third, the US, the UK and France, along with Turkey and Jordan, must raise through diplomatic channels the need for Arab allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to cease support for the jihadis, whether through supplying arms or through madrasses training boys and young men to become recruits.
Shirley Williams
House of Lords, London

Sir, Ed Miliband says Britain should seek UN sanction for air strikes on Isil in Syria. However, if the UN refuses to allow such military action surely this will place the US, which is already carrying out such air strikes, in the position of taking military action in defiance of the UN. Does Mr Miliband really wish us to embarrass our American ally?
Robert Strachan
Edgware, Middlesex

Sir, Without a UN mandate or an explicit invitation from the Syrian government, action against Isis in Syria is illegal under international law. If the government’s view is that due process at the UN is a waste of time, we should “do the right thing” and withdraw our membership. If not, we should demand that the Security Council decides on action. Short of that, we will be falling into the trap that Isis has set for us.
Simon Prentis
Cheltenham

Sir, David Cameron now speaks the same rhetoric I heard from Tony Blair prior to our invasion of Iraq in 2003. We were wrong to get involved in America’s crusade then, and we are wrong now. Far from being uniquely evil, the Islamic State is simply one actor in a Sunni uprising. They are not a threat to Britain. They are extreme but rational players who are successful only through the support of a large portion of the local population.
Bilal Patel
London E1

Sir, Can everyone stop referring to Isis and call it EAIS — Enemies against Islamic States — instead? It does not in any way represent any Islamic state.
Ben May
London N1

Sir, Dictators and fundamentalist “religious” leaders all employ hypnotherapeutic principles to get ideas past a person’s critical faculty. If they succeed, then that part of the mind controlling behaviour treats that concept as true: in short, it becomes a belief. It doesn’t matter what the idea is — the reprogrammed mind can happily destroy innocents in the belief of a reward. Isis is clever. It focuses on the mind while we appear to focus on drones, bombs and hardware.
Fraser White
Bunbury, Cheshire

Sir, Is this a good time for the UK to tow our aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean?
Martin Bean
Ryde, Isle of Wight

Sir, One million British workers are exposed to levels of noise that puts hearing at risk, and noise-induced hearing loss is a serious, permanent and debilitating condition (“Insurers cry ‘foul’ over rising claims of industrial deafness”, Business, Sept 22). This is entirely preventable, and employers who take note of the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 should have risk assessments on file.

An ENT specialist can also diagnose whether deafness is likely to have been caused by long-term exposure to loud noise. Industrial deafness is not a grey area in the context of insurance fraud.
Steve Perkins
Chief executive officer, British Occupational Hygiene Society

Sir, I think I can better Matthew Parris’s tale about two left shoes (“I’m a Tory, I simply could not have two left feet”, Sept 28). My father’s friend would walk across fields to catch the 8.30am train in wellington boots. At the station he would change into his well-polished black shoes, handing the boots to the porter for safekeeping. One morning, arriving late, he leapt on to the train and tossed the boots out of the window to the porter. He then sat down and opened his briefcase . . . no shoes!
Neil MacFadyen
Greenwich