All the world’s a stage – or should be

May I, as a fellow actor and admirer of Derek Jacobi, add a word to his concerns (“Today’s actors have lost art of vocal technique, says Jacobi”, News, last week)? Here in Britain, we have had, for four centuries, the greatest of creativity in drama and theatre performance since the days of Aristophanes and Sophocles. Since few politicians have a clue about this – more than 80% of professional performers being unemployed through lack of performance space – and most people are deprived of the opportunities to see live works, should we not now ensure that the theatre has a place in each and every community, akin to the free lending libraries and the parks? Every town and city should have its own repertory theatre, playing classics and local work by young and older people, with residential companies working hand in hand with schools and other institutions. As Laurence Olivier said in his maiden speech in the House of Lords: “I believe in the theatre… as the first glamouriser of thought.”

Who would pay for all this? The thousands who would flock to Great Britain, the world’s drama centre, from all parts of the globe, as many do already.

Ian Flintoff

Oxford

Nursery places, a solution

Michael Savage highlights the shortfall of government funding for free nursery places, which may cause some nurseries to close when the provision is extended to oneand two-year-olds (“‘This will be the end of nurseries’ warn childcare providers after budget giveaway”, News, last week). It amounts to £2.30 an hour. Given that this is new funding that will save parents thousands of pounds a year, why not just ask the parents to make up the difference? The vast majority would far sooner pay £20-25 a day than not have the option of a nursery.

Andy Fell

London SE4

Ordinary, yet extraordinary

Martha Gill’s excellent piece was a salutary reminder that the life lived by upper-class women was not the experience of all women

– in almost every age of history (“Think women have never had it so good? You should take a look at medieval days”, Comment, last week). I write historical novels and am working on one set in London in the early 18th century, which concentrates on ordinary people and the underworld. Someone objected that my heroine – a former “woman of the town” who sets up in business running a coffee house – was too “empowered”. But women like her were commonplace. Yes, she would need money. But without the need to be respectable and without a man who wanted to rule her life, a woman could set herself free.

I’ve found countless examples – coffee house owners, actors, courtesans, silversmiths, midwives, shopkeepers – who had choices, who had energy and talent and ambition and could forge their own paths with success. The “upper crust” is just that – a very thin, seductive and glittery crust that deceives the reader into thinking that was all there was. But probe beneath and you find a rich mixture of real, full and fulfilling lives that hardly ever get noticed, yet are much more representative of society at the time.

Pam Thomas

Devizes, Wiltshire

Make mould history

Black mould is a horrific problem (“‘This doesn’t feel like my home any more… the mould owns it’”, News, last week). Working with social tenants in my role as a unitary councillor, I have been shocked at how widespread it is. The root of the problem is always the same: inadequate insulation, failing windows and doors, and a lack of ventilation.

One housing association we work with has been an exemplar since the inquest into the death of toddler Awaab Ishak in Rochdale last year. We have identified priority cases where the mould is severe and the tenants have young children. The tenants have had extractors and window vents fitted. Problem walls have been treated with antifungal paint. However, a neighbourhood officer for another housing association reverted to the standard myth: black mould is the fault of the tenants. The suggestion is that tenants don’t keep their place clean. They create excess moisture by not having extractors on, even by boiling the kettle.

Social landlords need to stop making excuses for black mould in the properties they own. They need to bring them up to standard. To end the scandal of tenants’ health being damaged. To prevent another tragic death of a young child.

Andy Boddington, Shropshire councillor for Ludlow North, Ludlow

Beat ChatGPT the oral way

ChatGPT undoubtedly presents problems for academia and teachers (“Peer-reviewed academic paper on dangers of ChatGPT was written by… ChatGPT”, News, last week). However, one way to deal with this was hinted at in the final paragraph, viz “If you can’t hear your student’s voice, that is a warning”. In the faceto-face PhD viva, the candidate’s true understanding of their subject is invariably revealed, whatever appears in their written thesis. Timeconsuming, but perhaps we will have to use this method more widely.

Dr Russell Greene

London SW12

Voulez-vous? Absolutely not

So liking Abba shows a sure sign of maturity (Barbara Ellen, Comment, last week). At 76, I must be the most immature person on the planet. I loathe their music and always have done. It makes my flesh creep. Perhaps I need a psychiatrist.

Val Mainwood

Wivenhoe, Essex

Guaranteeing food for all

The extraordinary efforts of food bank teams, increasingly backed by corporate involvement, should not blind us to the fact that an emergency food parcel cannot do more than temporarily alleviate hunger. The latest plea for an essentials guarantee from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Trussell Trust and others is testament to the reality that growing reliance on food banks is an ineffective substitute for poverty-reducing policies.

All 38 member countries of the OECD now rely on a privatised charitable food aid model, often dependent on volunteer labour. The ubiquity of corporate food charity in high-income countries should provide a stark warning. The European Federation of Food Banks and the Global Foodbanking Network operate in 76 countries, including low- and middle-income states. Their mission is to expand “the presence and influence of food banks all over the world”.

While the expansion of organised surplus food redistribution might seem like a win-win solution, this practice fails to reduce food waste levels while undermining policies designed to address food insecurity. We need long-term solutions based on rights and social justice. Only governments can guarantee these rights. Adopting a “cash first” approach to food insecurity is vital to ensure people can access income before charity, but equally vital is the prioritisation of systemic changes to truly tackle poverty and inequality.

Guaranteeing the right to food and a living income through real living wages, together with adequate social security provision, is essential to ending the need for charitable food aid in all societies.

Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite, University of Birmingham; Professor Graham Riches, University of British Columbia; Sabine Goodwin, Independent Food Aid Network; and others online