Readers' letters - March 21

On Budget day, Sky News quietly posted an exclusive analysis of figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

Its findings show the taxpayer is set to lose nearly £22bn from George Osborne’s planned sale of our shares in the RBS bank.

What could we buy?

If Osborne didn’t keep mishandling the nation’s finances, our public institutions would be looking a whole lot better. The £22bn we are set to lose from RBS shares could pay for either:

n 103,000 nurses for 10 years (an annual starting wage of £21,388);

n 5,946 primary schools (an average cost of £3,700,000 each);

n 147,000 affordable homes (an average cost of £150,000 each;)

n 40 state-of-the-art hospitals (based on the £545,000,000 cost of the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham). But no, the opportunity will be squandered, while we are enduring an unprecedented housing crisis and an NHS buckling under austerity.

An ordinary person would be sacked.

John Horrocks via email

MILITARY

Remembering the Fallen


Between Sunday, June 19 and Friday, June 24, I will be leading a group from the north of England to visit Germany and Poland to commemorate the end of the Second World War, 71 years ago.

We will fly with Flybe direct to Berlin. We will visit Berlin, Potsdam (where Churchill, Truman and Stalin signed the Potsdam Agreement), Stalag Luft III of ‘The Great Escape’ fame (Camp and Museum), Dresden, Colditz Castle, Weimar and Buchenwald. We still have a few places left. If any of your readers would like more details, they can contact me by phone on 01368 866826, mobile 07710 270840 or by email on [email protected]. They can also write to me at 5 Fellside Terrace, Knock, Appleby­in­Westmorland, Cumbria CA16 6DH.

David Raw

Appleby-in-Westmorland


politics

IDS’ Road to Damascus

Iain Duncan Smith has been struck with a Road to Damascus moment concerning welfare policies, forced on him by the two ‘Posh Boys’ Osbourne and Cameron. Unfortunately, he has been walking that same road for the past six years, without apparently the slightest twinge to his conscience.

Can his exit road from the European Union have anything to do with his sudden conversion?

Denis Lee via email

technology

Face to face is much better

I would like to make a comment about how everything is to be done online.

I am 80 years old and my daughter spent three hours on her computer to renew my Blue Badge, which I would never have been able to do without a computer.

Please bring places back where we can speak to people face to face like we used to.

Mrs M Downs

Address supplied


politics

PM’s legacy

With failed EU negotiations, immigration policy, foreign aid, and the shambles of disability payments, David Cameron is fast catching Tony Blair, and Ted Heath, as the worst and most arrogant PM in living memory.

Barrie Crowther via email