Letters: our blueprint for a post-coronavirus future

The Greek word krisis originally denoted that critical moment when things could go either way for the patient. We believe that our society is at a similar turning point. As we recover from Covid-19, we must confront other, potentially graver crises, and create a more caring, united and resilient society. We must:

• Revalue care: nurses and carers deserve a pay rise, not just a round of applause. We should reverse marketisation of our NHS, and better integrate physical, mental and social care.

• Reduce inequality: present levels of inequality benefit no one, fragmenting society, distorting democracy and overburdening care systems. We must reject austerity measures, house the UK’s homeless and consider implementing a universal basic income.

• Get to grips with the climate and ecological emergency, by “baking in” good lockdown practices, adopting strict year-by-year carbon budgets in line with the UN’s 1.5 degree target, and localising production, consumption and travel where possible.

• Set up an independent public inquiry on the handling of the pandemic, to make sure the lessons are learned.

• Create a UK Citizens’ Assembly for the Future, selected at random, to counter the short-termism, lack of representation and bias of our political institutions. This body would work alongside parliament, focusing on longer-term issues such as disaster planning, institutional reform and the low carbon transition.

There can be no doubt that we face a krisis – now we must take urgent steps to ensure a full recovery. (Full text and signatories at theunfinishedrevolution.net).
Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC; Baroness Ruth Lister, Loughborough University; Richard Wilkinson, University of Nottingham; Baron Rowan Williams, Magdalen College, Cambridge; Jonathan Wolff, University of Oxford; and 33 academics, lawyers, writers and activists

Pupil health must come first

There are no easy answers to when schools should be allowed to reopen (“The Observer view on how the debate on schools has been seriously mishandled”, Editorial). There are no easy answers as to how to manage that return. There are no easy answers to parents’, teachers’ and the general public’s understandable concerns over both policy and practice. But there is an easy answer to the question of who should make that reopening decision. It needs a body without an obvious vested interest – that cannot be the government or the teachers’ unions or employers’ organisations. That arbiter should be the BMA.
Professor Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria

Ave María

Your description of María Branyas, (“Spain’s great survivor”, News) who “outlived the 1918 flu epidemic and two world wars” is oddly ethnocentric, since Spain was not a belligerent in either world war. Her achievement, of course, was to survive the Spanish civil war.
Alan Knight
Oxford

Rule 1: know your brief

As Andrew Anthony writes, “few, if any, health secretaries come from medical backgrounds” (“Who’d be a health secretary?”, the New Review). Lack of first-hand experience of their remit is the rule rather than the exception for secretaries of state; this, combined with ideological bias, makes them vulnerable to the loudest and most persuasive lobbyists, and thus more likely to make poor policy decisions. There are endless examples of these ministers alienating “their” workforce (Michael Gove as education secretary achieved this within days of being appointed).

Surely it is time that a sine qua non qualification for becoming secretary of state is to have spent a significant period working in that field? This, combined with good management and leadership, would encourage confidence in the workforce, and, crucially, the quality of policymaking would be much improved.
Max Fishel
Bromley, Greater London

Truly a party of the right

Barbara Ellen rightly labels Nadine Dorries a “disgrace” for spreading far-right lies about Keir Starmer on Twitter (“Dorries, you’re a disgrace for spreading fake news”, Comment). That three Conservative MPs retweeted such divisive filth – before refusing to apologise – demonstrates just how extreme some Tory MPs are. The Conservatives might have been a centre-right party a decade ago, but that’s no longer the case. The cabinet is full of ideological rightwing populists who have no grasp of reality, and the backbenches, similarly, contain many rightwing nationalists. French Wikipedia lists the British Conservative party as “right wing” (droite), not “centre right”. While Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson remain at the top of the party, such an assertion is not wrong.
Sebastian Monblat
Sutton, London

The plot thickens

Regarding your article “Did Agatha Christie ‘borrow’ the plot for this genre-bending novel… from Norway?” (News): a more likely source was Israel Zangwill’s novel, The Big Bow Mystery, published as a serial in 1891 and as a book in 1892. I won’t give away the plot...
Dr Eldrid Herrington
University of Cambridge

The price of a US trade deal

William Keegan (“Brexit: a strange idea derailed by our strange times”, Business) points out that our government seems happy to give up £112bn from our departure from the EU in exchange for a £3.4bn gain from a US deal, presumably as a price worth paying for not being required to accept a single EU rule. But, leaving aside the probability that the EU will in due course obtain a better deal with the US than the UK could, has it occurred to our international trade secretary that all trade deals involve give and take, and that the US will undoubtedly require some “give” by the UK in the form of accepting US rules on, for example, food standards?
Alan Pavelin
Chislehurst, Kent

Lavatorial language

I was startled to read that Jay Rayner uses a “gosunder” in his kitchen on a regular basis (The Happy Eater, Observer Food Monthly). Where I grew up in Derbyshire, this was the name of an entirely different vessel. My grandmother had them under the beds in the house where she lived from her marriage in 1933 until her late 80s, as her landlord did not see fit to upgrade her outside toilet in all those years. A rearrangement of doors by my grandad 50-odd years ago meant that a visit to the loo no longer involved the open air, but even so, a gosunder was preferable to traipsing downstairs through a house with no central heating, even with the ritual of emptying its contents in the morning.
Sarah-Jane Watkinson
Birmingham