Banishing second-home owners will suck the life from seaside towns

Foreign aid cuts

SIR – Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs should serve as a reminder that the global order is changing and becoming ever more unstable. The UK should resist the temptation to respond in kind with isolationism. Instead, we need to reframe our understanding of foreign aid, not as charity, but as a strategic asset.

The proposed cuts to the UK’s aid budget – to 0.3 per cent of gross national income – are not just ethically questionable, they are also geopolitically short-sighted. As global supply chains fracture and new alliances form, our soft power tools are more important than ever. 

Organisations like The Borgen Project have long argued that ending global poverty is not only a moral imperative, but one of the smartest investments in national security. Aid should not be treated as an easy budget cut, but instead as a forward-facing defence strategy.

As a nation with outsized global influence, Britain has a choice either to retreat or to lead. In uncertain times, we need to choose the latter by protecting and expanding the UK’s commitment to international development.

Imaara Keshwani
Manchester
 

Lockdown breaches

SIR – I wrote to you on June 20 2020: “If the Government does not end this lockdown, the lockdown will end this Government.” I was correct. It did end the Conservative government. Yet here we are, nearly five years later, and some people are being dragged through the courts for “alleged Covid breaches” (report, April 7). 

Interestingly, Sir Keir Starmer, a firm believer in lockdown, seems unconcerned by this.

Mark Macauley
Warminster, Wiltshire
 

Holocaust on screen

SIR – I feel that everyone, especially young people, should be compelled to watch Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz (Arts, April 8), a moving documentary on the origins and horrors of the Holocaust, which was shown on BBC Two on Monday. It demonstrates man’s incomprehensible inhumanity to man, and explains the deep-rooted fears of a nation determined never to allow such degradation to occur again. 

Sam Mendes’s documentary, What They Found, about the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, filmed starkly and honestly by two British soldiers, should also be given wider coverage.

Valerie Sheldon
Poole, Dorset
 

Food and board

SIR – Dorothy Woolliscroft (Letters, April 7) recalls that candidates for the private girls’ school where she worked were asked: “What do you call the room where you eat your breakfast?” 

My father was a hotel manager, and for most of my childhood I lived in hotels around the country. On joining a new primary school in south London, we were asked to write what we had for breakfast. I shudder at my reply: “Whatever’s on the menu”. 

Sara Donovan
West Wickham, Kent

SIR – When my daughter went to Oxford, one of the questions was: “How many books do you have in your house?” To help, the university gave a figure of books per metre of bookshelf.

My daughter was pleased to report that our house was “off the scale”.

Keith Appleyard
West Wickham, Kent
 

Dumbed-down GCSEs

SIR – AQA, the largest exam board in the country, has made changes to the English Language GCSE exam, which is taken by more than 500,000 students per year. 

It has characterised these changes, which will affect current Year 10 students, as “light but meaningful”. Most are technical amendments to the wording of questions, but the major change is that students now only have to write an “opening” to a story, rather than an entire narrative, for the creative writing question (worth 25 per cent of the GCSE). This is a massive reduction in the level of challenge, which will adversely affect the most skilled writers’ ability to differentiate themselves from other candidates.

AQA introduced these changes in January, after many Year 10 students had already begun preparing for their GCSEs. The result is that, in many schools, including my own, we now need them to unlearn the previous format of the exams, and focus on the new one. This is not only boring, but also wastes valuable learning time. Furthermore, there was no consultation process – the changes were introduced by diktat in response to “teacher feedback”.

The Curriculum Review makes the right noises about “high expectations”, but the devil will be in the detail: the interim report, among other things, expresses a desire to make sure “assessments are not unnecessarily burdensome for students and teachers” (code for less rigorous, less frequent exams), as well as assaulting the principle of the English Baccalaureate.

School education is one of the few things that governments in the past 15 years got right; they had an unimpeachable dedication to raising standards, which resulted in England moving up the Pisa ranking tables. Their good work is in danger of being undone by ideological politicians and incompetent exam boards. For our students and our children, they must not be allowed to get away with it.

Andrew Sawbridge
English teacher, Southfields Academy
London SW18
 

Unbrained melody

SIR – When plagued with an earworm (Letters, April 8), I attempt to engage my brain in a difficult task to distract it from the melody on repeat. 

A favourite is to calculate my age in days. However, the answer is becoming distressingly large, so perhaps I need to find an alternative strategy.

Philip Chandler
Bourne, Lincolnshire
 

How one school dinner ruined custard forever

SIR – I well remember school dinners in the late 1940s (“Gristly beef and watery cabbage: the school meals I’ll never miss”, Comment, April 7). Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, recalls custard and orange fish fingers. I recall kippers with custard. 

I still eat kippers, but I have never managed custard since.

Joanna Staughton
Sarratt, Hertfordshire

SIR – I loved school dinners. I would be unable to visit the Food Museum, which appears to have discombobulated Jane Shilling (Comment, April 7), for fear of wanting to eat the exhibits.

Matthew Atkins
Grundisburgh, Suffolk

SIR – My recollection is that gypsy tart, which filled Jane Shilling with horror, was a highlight of the term. After weeks of tough liver, lumpy mash and gravy, which fell on the plate with a resounding thud, the entire school licked its lips in anticipation of the delicious pudding.

The only people to dread the incredibly sweet and sticky tart were the local dentists.

Ian Dickens
Gurnard, Isle of Wight

SIR – School dinners do seem to have improved since my youth, most notably at Christ’s College in Finchley, north London, whose cook, Amber Francis, won this year’s Great British Menu competition. 

Her dish of fermented strawberries, charcoal biscuit and hay-infused cream put my fondly remembered gypsy tart to shame.

Mary Moore
Croydon, Surrey
 

Trump’s tariffs mean fresh trade opportunities

SIR – President Trump’s advice, “Don’t be a PANICAN” (report, April 8), could equally apply to the UK and other countries formulating their responses to America’s tariffs.

A good example to look to is Gordon Brown’s astute handling of the financial crisis of 2008, when he took a leadership role in pushing for international coordination. Similarly, the UK could, today, choose to lead the fostering of stronger relationships between trading partners to reduce the impact of US tariffs. 

We could also use the UK’s membership of the Asia-Pacific trade bloc CPTPP to encourage tariff reductions and promote digital trade. 

Importantly, the UK should work to maintain quiet, respectful diplomacy with the US, particularly in the areas of security and intelligence sharing, rather than seek public confrontation.

But is our Government capable of turning the present crisis into an opportunity? 

Paul Allen
Fleet, Hampshire
 

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