The Guardian insists (Editorial, 30 September) on understanding the Conservative party’s approach to social security policy in a discourse that supposedly distinguishes the “deserving” from the “undeserving”, the “shirker” from the “skiver”. George Osborne’s announcements are, in fact, better understood as being a restatement of less eligibility as the economic and social spur to do wage work. Less eligibility is the idea that the independent labourer’s position should always been more eligible, more economically and socially preferable, than that of the pauper. Freezing benefits and tax credits aims to do this by increasing the income gap between those in and out of work. The position of the working poor, at first glance, seems anomalous, but it is consistent with the thrust of less eligibility that working age people should support themselves and not rely upon the state for their subsistence income.
Dr Chris Grover
Senior lecturer in social policy, Law School, Lancaster University

• Conservative party officials have justified the freeze on benefit increases in work and unemployment by arguing that average earnings have grown by 14%, but working-age benefits have been uprated by 22.4% (Report, 30 September). They forget the past 10-year increase in the RPI of 38%, the cost of domestic fuel of 154%, of food, 46%, and of local authority and social rents, 56%. National government cutting and freezing housing benefit, and local government passing on cuts in council tax benefit uses up cash needed for food and fuel. No problem for those with an income of £100,000 a year, whose income has increased by 14%, or £14,000 cash. Sadly, Tory amnesia seems to have infected everyone in the mother of parliaments.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty

• George Osborne’s announcement that a Tory government would dispense with housing benefit for the under-21s will surely have the very opposite effect to what he hopes for. This cabinet may be too London-centred to realise that almost 50% of the population still live in rural areas, while most jobs are in towns and cities. At the moment, housing benefit for this age group is limited to the cost of a room in a shared house or a bedsit; hardly a luxury lifestyle, but it does get them within striking distance of a job opportunity. Expecting them to live at home with mum and dad in a rural area with a limited (and expensive) public transport is only going to make getting a job more problematic and shift work would be an impossibility.
Jacqui Davis
Cambridge

• It is worthwhile contrasting the £3bn the chancellor expects the proposed benefits freeze to take from more than 10 million working poor households with – to take but one example from this year’s round of bank bonuses – the £2.4bn paid out by Barclays to just 481 of the working rich. The chancellor certainly remembered to talk about reduction of the deficit in his speech but for some reason “forgot” to repeat previous pronouncements that we’re all in it together.
Arthur Birchall
Isleworth, Middlesex

• Osborne may think cutting benefits to the working poor to reduce the deficit will win back former Tory voters from Ukip but it may equally cause larger number of former Lib Dem voters to vote Labour. Whatever happened to caring Conservatism? It is not long ago Theresa May warned that too many voters thought of the Tories as the nasty party.
Valerie Crews
Beckenham, Kent

• Once again the chancellor announces that he intends to rob the poor to pay the rich, with his newest idea for “benefits cards”. Does he not realise that the poorer members of society, particularly those in receipt of benefits, rely heavily on cash transactions as a way of balancing the family budget? To insist on the use of benefits cards will serve only to result in an added and costly layer of bureaucracy while simultaneously taking away any remaining bargaining powers available to the poor or needy. You cannot haggle at a fruit and veg stall if you have only a plastic card with which to settle the bill.

Those on benefits are not usually poor by choice. Why, therefore, must the chancellor treat the poor and needy as if they are sinners in need of repentance? If we rob the poorest and most vulnerable members of society simply because they cannot fight back, we rob ourselves of hope and self-respect.
Terry Moran
Leeds

• Maybe Osborne’s cuts would be less popular if given their true titles: not “housing benefit” but “landlord subsidy”; not “in-work benefit” but “stingy employer subsidy”. Those who receive these so-called benefits don’t hang on to them very long, they soon reach the pockets of the well-to-do.
Anna Hodgetts
Burgess Hill, West Sussex

• David Cameron supports funding for the NHS because, from his own family tragedy, he understands personally how important the NHS is (PM tries to plant a Tory flag on NHS with spending vow, 1 October). That is a fine sentiment. What a pity he has no direct family awareness of needing to rely on jobseeker’s allowance, working tax credits or other benefits. He might then understand personally how important they are and hence how they ought, if anything, to be increased, not reduced in real terms.
Peter Cave
London

• I worked for the NHS for 20 years and the next 19 in an academic setting specifically employed to train people entering my profession for the NHS. I left the NHS in the cloud of cuts introduced under Thatcher, have watched funding cut or reallocated to balance books, all these last 30 years or so. The Conservatives are the worst offenders consistently, have continually cut NHS funding in real terms by, for instance, freezing budgets, allowing mental health monies to be used to bail out the inevitably more expensive physical health services, not keeping to their promise of increasing, prioritising or matching funding for mental health services, despite all the economic arguments for doing this.

I can say this from the now relative safety of retirement and non attachment to the NHS anymore except as an occasional patient and family consumer of health cuts. Lies, lies and damned lies to the anxious but concerned voter and more promises of jam tomorrow for votes now. Let me clarify: you can have a strong NHS if you fund it properly – indeed, economically, this would save money down the line in the future. The current economy is irrelevant and a plea to us for sympathy for failure. People would be happy for any modest tax increase that agreed and showed that such money was allocated to developing the best health service possible; these issues are ignored, and the last people to be asked about this are the electorate.
Peter Elliott
Ventnor, Isle of Wight

• I’m concerned the proposed increase in NHS funding by the Conservatives, if re-elected, will be hoovered up by the privatisation agenda, and trickle up to shareholders and the wealth of the corporations rather than for patient care.
Gavin Robinson
London

Knockabout is impossible in the huge hall of the Bundestag, its too big (Germans look to liven up Berlin’s political life with a bit of Westminster knockabout, 26 September). The key feature of the House of Commons is its small debating chamber – only 21m by 14m. It was derived originally from a long narrow chapel with benches for members facing one another, thus disposing them to behave in an adversarial manner. This style of debate can make the chamber a lively, rather noisy place, with robustly expressed opinion, many interventions, expressions of approval or disapproval, and sometimes of repartee and banter – knockabout. After its destruction in 1941, debates were held on whether it should be rebuilt as a semi-circular chamber. Winston Churchill opened the debate with his now famous quotation: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.” He would have advised the Bundestag to build itself a knockabout-shaped chamber – small and narrow.
Maurice King
Quondam honorary research fellow,
University of Leeds

The spectacle of education minister Nicky Morgan trying to ingratiate herself with disaffected teachers at the Tory party’s pre-election conference was galling (Report, 29 September), coming as it does after a sustained and brutal attack on both the profession and state education by her predecessor. The same day, Sally Morgan, ex-chair of Ofsted, told delegates to the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ conference the academy and free school programme pushed so hard by Michael Gove, was characterised by “patchy results, mismanagement and the occasional scandal”, calling it “the rushed revolution”.

Here in Brighton and Hove we are celebrating our own revolution in which it took students, parents and teachers six months to overturn a planned academy conversion to Hove Park school. At no point did the parents, students and teachers making up the campaign think that conversion of this “good” local authority secondary school was inevitable or desirable. Instead we made banners, wrote letters, composed songs, tweeted, marched, rallied, lobbied, laughed, performed, donated, banged wheelie bins and stood together even when the teachers went on strike.

Sally Morgan’s assessment reflects our own conclusions as to the risks of the academy system, and Nicky Morgan shows no sign of slowing the rush. I urge others faced with this relentless encroachment on their public education system to unite and resist for the sake of generations of children.
Natasha Steel
Hands Off Hove Park School

I don’t think that I will be the only one alarmed by Theresa May’s proposals. Oh yes, they’ll be welcomed in some quarters, but if I read them correctly, they represent the most draconian attack on freedom of speech in my lifetime (Editorial, 1 October). Added to the annihilation of our internet and telephonic privacy, they could take us into the Russian and Chinese domain of dissenter control. The argument that they are needed because of an ever-increasing terrorist threat fails against, for instance, the Northern Ireland “troubles” experience, where, deprived of, in Thatcher’s words, “the oxygen of publicity”, IRA recruitment thrived. And where will the censorship end? Investigative journalists, editors, actors, dramatists, criminalised for broaching the subject? Of particular concern is exactly what will qualify as extremism. Will it just be jihadist preachers and Holocaust deniers, or will it be the ultra-left, anybody who is seen as undermining or opposing the status quo? Will protests against bombing in Iraq or Syria now be banned? Will it, like other similar legislation in the past, such as the Terrorism Act, be abused? Who can be confident it won’t? Relevant questions in my view. Taking away freedom on the pretext of preserving freedom, curbing democracy on the pretext of defending democracy, are not only contradictions, they are arguably a route to a totalitarian state.
James Calhoun
Tarragona, Spain

• Instead of hand-wringing and knee-jerk reactions, Theresa May, Muslim Womens Network, counter-terrorism experts and Bristol police (Report, 30 September) should look at our own country and its warmongering. Army cadet corps; armed forces recruitment adverts; Help the Heroes events; the media glorifying “our brave lads”… all acting as recruiting agents for the state and “radicalising” vulnerable youngsters into thinking killing these “nasty” people abroad is their patriotic duty. Our foreign policy may alienate some British Muslims, but our whole culture is geared to creating a militaristic state bent on war as a distraction from the misery at home.
David Wheatley
Margate, Kent

Israel “gladly acknowledges” that the Palestinians have a right to a state says Joshua Rowe (Letters, 1 October). Perhaps that is true, if the meaning of the word state is stretched to the limit, and beyond what most people understand it to mean in this context. Speaking about a Palestinian state, David Bar-Illan, spokesman for the Israeli government, has said “semantics don’t matter”. If Palestinian sovereignty is limited enough they can have a state, “call it fried chicken”.Regardless of semantics, the position of our government is that the settlements are illegal and there should be a two-state solution. Anyone who believes those two propositions must vote yes in the debate that will take place in parliament on the motion that “this House believes that the government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel”. We should all email our MPs and call on them to do so.
Brendan O’Brien
London

• Your article (Opinion, 30 September) made me draw parallels with our much vaunted England footballers and Tesco’s directors. Neither can compete on the international stage and at the same time are grossly overpaid. They can’t compete with the Germans even on home soil. Pay cuts all round or bigger bonuses?
Dr RJ Nash
Coventry

• In the discussions of the minimum wage and excessive pay packages, might I propose the following formula: in any enterprise the minimum wage shall be one tenth of the highest pay package, or £10 an hour, whichever is higher. I believe that would solve both problems with one sweep of the legislators’ pens.
Adrian Stern
London

• As a 14-year-old I saw Dannie Abse read his poems at our local adult education college (Obituary, 30 September). Just before he started I bumped into him in the gents toilet. He stood in front of the mirror with perfectly combed hair and deliberately fluffed it into wild grey candy floss. I knew then that poetry was for me.
Toby Wood
Peterborough

• Perhaps the charitable knitters could now knit some brightly coloured willy warmers for the rather over-exposed Brooks Newmark (Report, 1 October?
Anna Ford
London

• I have found the perfect name for England and any other bits of the UK that might remain with it should any other bits eventually decide to leave. Since the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is FYROM, the Former United Kingdom of England, Wales etc should be known as FUK-EWE (Letters, 28 September.
Simon Coates
Brussels, Belgium

Karen Armstrong’s article (Secularism – a violent history, 25 September) is a classic piece of whataboutery, since the point at issue is whether religions are likely to provoke violence, not what supposedly secular regimes may have been guilty of. The key difference is that a secular philosophy of government can evolve (and has evolved) towards being more humane, more tolerant of diversity and less inclined to interfere in people’s personal moral choices. By contrast, too many people who proclaim a deep commitment to religion are convinced that they have a handle on absolute truth, which therefore gives them the right to harass and bully others or even to kill them. Add to this an obsession with religious purity, a passion for the worship of authority and a rejection of any type of thinking which wasn’t part of their faith’s supposed golden age and you have exactly the sort of fundamentalism which we see in Islamic State, ultra-orthodox Judaism and those Christians who are so keen to persecute homosexuals. Yes, Karen, the problem is religion.
Roger Fisken
Bedale, North Yorkshire

• I read Karen Armstrong with pleasure and admiration. I was taught (perhaps incorrectly) that the word “religion” was derived from the Latin “ligare”, to bind, and had the meaning of a bonding together. During the war there was a strong feeling that we really were bound together, and people went to church. We prayed for peace, also for victory. My young ears often heard these words: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against … the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” So many of the ideals we believe in and fought for are part of our Christian heritage. Since the war we have somehow lost this bonding, and church services are seldom occasions that celebrate togetherness. But there is still plenty of spiritual wickedness in high places to wrestle against, and secularists should not lightly dismiss our Christian heritage.
Philip Pendered
Tonbridge, Kent

• Armstrong is wrong to say “Atatürk partitioned the region”. The Ottoman empire was divided by Sykes, Picot, and western powers, sowing the seeds of present discontents and dangers. Atatürk defended his country against an imperialist Christian thrust to the east, reminiscent of the Crusades – and continuing today.
John Thesiger
Staines-on-Thames, Middlesex

• I refute the implication that the barbarism of Islamic State is somehow due to us not supporting Muslims against “secular” military coups. These coups are no more secular than historical colonial takeovers that were preceded by and accompanied by church missionary invasion. As stated by the author, wars have been primarily politically motivated, without strict religious divides, but it is a fallacy to say that people confused religion with politics: the mass of British peasantry has a long tradition of failure to attend church, and fought primarily for clear and defined political freedoms. A monotheistic god has been used as a tool of war since the time of Constantine, and the rhetoric of the US Bush administration was an overt Christian crusade, so secularism cannot take the blame for any entrenchment of Islam against the west. Karen Armstrong appears to have confused religion with politics: to believe in a god is primitive, to ablate female genitalia is an abhorrence and, at the risk of confusing religion with culture, it is not colonial to state that.
C Iliffe
Leeds

• When Karen Armstrong asserts that “In a different environment, modernity may well take other forms” (than secularism), could she please indicate whether she expects these forms to support or deny freedom of conscience?  While repressive regimes can emerge in both secular and religious societies, monotheist theocracies do seem particularly prone to them. If secularism is, as she suggests, a rare aberration, the very concept of freedom of belief may be an endangered species – a possibility few of us would contemplate with equanimity.
Ruth Brown
Plymouth

• I have long admired Karen Armstrong’s work, and liked much of her piece. Her history is good and her conclusions are sound: we need to look seriously at the casual arrogance of our own behaviour over the last 100 years or so. But she has skated over a central point, which she herself mentions elsewhere in her work: is religion about behaviour or belief? Founders of religions seem to incline more towards behaviour, but their successors have emphasised belief: belief will make you an insider – one of us – and ensure salvation, even if your behaviour is sadly lacking. But belief is based on conviction, not evidence; those who do not share the convictions are wrong, and no compromise with them is possible. From there it is a small step to believing that it is right to make them believe, and that thought can escalate until it includes torture and death, which has already happened countless times in history.

Of course, the lust for power can produce the same outcomes, but that does not excuse religion, and we can hope that power is occasionally realistic enough to be capable of compromise (especially if it sees its power in danger), but a deeply held religious belief is not. I do not believe that religion is inherently violent, but I do believe that (with wonderful and inspiring exceptions) many religious people, and most religious leaders, regard the non-religious, or those who hold different beliefs, as outsiders, lesser folk, dreadfully misguided, a danger to the true believers, and therefore – to put it simply – as less than human. And seeing people as less than human is why we have wars. Armstrong’s nuancing of the role of religion in violence is well done – but not quite convincing.
Nick Shepherd
London

• Karen Armstrong gave a fairly detailed historical survey but she overlooked a vital point. The reason why religion and deeply ideological politics are so dangerous is that they make absolute truth claims but have deeply unsatisfactory procedures for deciding between competing claims. Compare this with science. Scientists make tentative truth claims and have very robust decision procedures to settle conflicting views. Consequently, serious religious disputes generally result either in bloodshed or, if that is prevented, in division. The latter then provides a continuing danger of the former; as with Protestants and Catholics, Shia and Sunni and many more.
Trevor Hussey
Emeritus professor of philosophy, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire

• Karen Armstrong counsels us to divert our concerns with the intolerant vices of modern fundamentalism from religion to secularism. She portrays secularisation, the declining social significance of religion, as the often violent outcome of secularism, the policy of separating church and state. This is an ahistorical conflation. As shown by much of her own research, as well as that of many scholars, western secularisation has had precious little to do with secularism, and virtually nothing to do with so-called “new atheism” which she cites. In Europe and many other nations, the collapse of Christendom, church decay and the erosion of religious culture and rites have been almost entirely due to the blossoming of religious indifference. It is apathy, not anti-religion, violent or otherwise, that has sent swaths of the west hurtling towards secularity. Whatever the sources of the fundamentalism within Islam, Christianity or Judaism, and however much philosophers may pitch secularism against religionism, secularisation has a discrete history driven almost wholly by popular alienation from either.
Callum G Brown
Professor of late modern European history, University of Glasgow

• Karen Armstrong’s survey of religions in history is thorough and appreciated – though she might perhaps have mentioned Rousseau, whose views (especially in La Profession de foi) indicate an advisable compatibility between religion and the best functioning of individuals and societies.

She also fails to draw the essential and imperative distinction between, on the one hand, the incitements by those who, in the name of religion, drive loyal followers to atrocities and, on the other, the practices of religion itself.

While it is true that psychopaths of one kind or another have led others to massacres and to self-destruction (as Karen shows), we should not mistake this loyalty for innate crowd malevolence. Persuaded by their self-esteeming betters, decent people will go on crusades, bomb whole families, fight in trenches, despise Africans, Jews, Germans, French, American natives, women, or any designated group of difference, and be incited to use violence against them all. This doesn’t make them stupid any more than supporting Man United is stupid. It is loyalty pure and simple.

History has demonstrated that a tiny minority of psychopaths have had the power to seize any banner – religion or whatever – and lead the brave and patriotic to murder one another on an increasingly scientific and massive scale.

And yet, religions, in the personal lives of the decent majorities, have inspired perhaps all that is best in the human story: lifelong bondings of love and caring, personal sacrifice, courage to take aid and medicine to infected areas, to risk life for others, generosity and hospitality, and the finest seedlings of great art, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, drama and the imagination. So what must we do? Simple. Somehow we must rid ourselves of the psychos on all sides who exploit differences (including religion) for their own insanities – and we must heed the decencies of men and women for many of whom religion is a valued compass. In short, democracy in the total sense – and in much more than just the ballot box.
Ian Flintoff
Oxford

• Karen Armstrong’s essay makes me wonder how much the barbarity of Islamic State stems from mainstream 19th-20th century secular political thought, rather than from Islam. The French revolution, Bolshevik revolution, Nazi Germany, Mao’s cultural revolution and Pol Pot’s year zero all bear the same messianic belief that extreme, barbarous means are needed in order to change society. Put more bluntly, do religion and political ideology serve the same role in human minds?
David Whalley
Macclesfield, Cheshire

• Armstrong is wrong on the Armenian issue. Armenians were relocated by the Ottomans not because of their religion, but because of their bloody uprising posing a serious security threat. Armenians in the western part of Anatolia were exempt from relocation. The western powers and Christian missionaries fuelled the rebellion. The purported “genocide” is a myth. If Ms Armstrong has a problem with secularism, she can move to a Muslim country where sharia is the law and judge it for herself.
Ferruh Demirmen
Houston, Texas

• Karen Armstrong seems to have embarked on rewriting history in order to prove that secularism is as guilty of violence as religion. In her references to Turkey and Ataturk, she claims that “(Ataturk) epitomised the cruelty of secular nationalism”, and that “he continued the policy of ethnic cleansing of Armenians and Greeks”. This is contrary to historical facts; and her use of terms such as “genocide” and “the beloved institution of the caliphate” are all devoid of any proper scholarship and truthfulness.

In English usage, “secularism” is often used to mean “against religion”, whereas as one of the founding principles of the Turkish Republic (in 1923, and not 1918!) under Ataturk’s leadership “laicism” was never about banning religion by force. (On the contrary he had the Koran and “call to prayer” translated from Arabic to Turkish, and encouraged Muslim Turks to engage with their religion in their own language.) It was about separation of religion from the state and government whereby stopping the domination of any particular religion or sect over others. In this sense, all religions are served best by secularism, and not theocracy or “sharia”, simply because secularism ensures freedom of faith to all on equal terms.

In order to understand the historical events and present conflicts in the Middle East, it is essential to recognise that religion is the most effective instrument to manipulate and to dominate peoples … and not only by the leaders of the groups involved in these conflicts, but also, and spectacularly, by external powers who are very much involved to exploit any potential to pursue their own interests.
Berna Basatemur
London

• Let’s get one fact straight: Karen Armstrong claims Locke was “a major advocate of the theory of natural human rights”. Allow me to direct Ms Armstrong to Locke’s Proposed constitution for the Carolinas, in which he shows himself to be nothing more than a racist, capitalist bigot without the slightest thought for human rights.
David Beake
Wymondham, Norfolk

Sir, Marin Alsop (“Proms conductor attacks ‘snobbish’ classical music world” Sept 29) should not resort to outdated dogma. Our daughters attended our local comprehensive school and both played in the Proms this season; we both come from working-class backgrounds. Classical music is available to all, but to enjoy it requires some effort which is not part of popular culture for a lot of youngsters.
Roger and Sue Sutcliffe
Dovercourt, Essex

Sir, Please let’s hear no more of this “classical music is elitist” whine.
A similar complaint in sport (“Manchester United? . . . nah, that’s elitist; give me Upton Snodsbury Rangers any day”) would be laughed off the terraces. Elite means simply the best: application to any great art or sport reaps rewards and is inclusive. Snobbery excludes and is to be condemned.
Andrew Keener
New Malden, Surrey

Sir, Your report mentions that Steven Isserlis, apparently Britain’s leading cellist, disagrees that classical music is elitist. He goes on to say that people are bending over backwards to bring classical music to “the masses”. And then he says “I’m very keen to bring everyone in . . . as long as it doesn’t cheapen the music and put intelligent people off”. He may like to reflect on that statement and then tell us again that classical music isn’t elitist.
FW Nunneley
Beckley, E Sussex

Sir, Some years ago I attended a jazz concert and found it was de rigueur to applaud each solo stint. With up to a dozen players in each band this entailed a lot of clapping. It was a relief to return to the “elitist” classical concert hall where I can listen in rapt silence, and save my applause till the end.
Alan McLoughlin
Helston, Cornwall

Sir, Applauding during a movement is disconcerting for most performers. In Handel’s day, bored operagoers would hold loud conversations, move around, eat snacks and play cards. Perhaps Marin Alsop would like a return to that nightmare scenario.
Richard Lester
Cirencester, Glos

Sir, Mozart, who wrote The Magic Flute (on the site of my home in Operngasse), revelled in feedback. Following the clapping during the premiere of his Paris Symphony, Mozart wrote to his father: “I was so delighted I bought myself an ice cream, prayed a rosary as I had pledged and went home.” Restraining enthusiasm is a sure way to stifle it.
Dr John Doherty
Vienna

Sir, The Proms performance of Britten’s War Requiem was greeted by five minutes’ silence. Listening at home, and possibly expecting more to come, I found the continuing silent reception thrilling and apt. Finally two hands began to clap and in an instant the Albert Hall was resounding to heartfelt applause. When the music moves us we give thanks in silence, then we thank the performers with applause.
Robin Price
Winchester

Sir, It is good to welcome people hearing a work for the first time,
but I think they would feel more comfortable if they refrained from applause until they heard general applause. That is what experienced concertgoers do. It prevents embarrassment.
Philip Roe
St Albans, Herts

Sir, Marin Alsop should be careful what she wishes for. Appreciating applause between the movements of a symphony is one thing, but would she be so happy with those who might feel the urge to boo and hiss?
Guy Rutherford
London SW13

Sir, It is curious that applause during the performance of a symphony is considered overenthusiastic or deplorable, whereas for opera the reverse is the case. Mozart would be very puzzled.
Michael Stennett
Yoxford, Suffolk

Sir, Verdi and Puccini constructed showpiece arias so as to invite applause. Silence after the likes of Celeste Aida or Nessun Dorma seems wrong.
Tony Phillips
Chalfont St Giles, Bucks

Sir, I am not sure that Melanie Reid (“We’re far too prim for this age of cybersex”, Sept 30) has understood why older people are shocked by the behaviour of politicians such as Brooks Newmark. It is less about morality and more that we are astounded by the gullibility of a supposedly clever individual in a position of trust. That is the scandal and why resignation must follow.
Dr Geoffrey M Seeff
Woodford Green, Essex

Sir, Melanie Reid suggests we take a more tolerant attitude to sex. In the case of politicians, I disagree. A married person who has an affair is probably lying to their spouse and won’t hesitate to lie to me.
Ron Wood
Galhampton, S Somerset

Sir, Melanie Reid is right. Whoever is prime minister in 2035, there will be online photographs of them in advanced stages of merriment and undress. Unless we wish to condemn ourselves to perpetual rule by puritan professional politicians, we will need to refresh our concept of “scandal”.
Charles Corn
Hartley Wintney, Hants

Sir, I enjoyed Janice Turner’s article (“Why Nigel Farage has his tanks parked in my home town”, Sept 30). That phrase is political hyperbole, though. It should be “tankards”.
Glyn Thomas
Bradenstoke, Wilts

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