Letters: the little-known role of liquorice in parliamentary history

Pennies pinching

Sir: I agree with much of this week’s editorial, except for two points (‘Nunc dimittis’, 25 April). As a formerly Positively Vetted civil servant, I cannot see what point there is in vetting an applicant for a job if the outcome of the vetting (as opposed of course to the private details) is not made known to the appointer. Who was responsible for this not happening in the current case still remains obscure.

The second point I take issue with is your pressing for the end of the triple lock for pensions. I wish you would suggest how pensioners who have the ‘full’ state pension, and just enough more to put them over the threshold for Pension Credit, are expected to live? Would it not be infinitely more equitable to collect some form of tax or surcharge from those pensioners who are so often described as millionaires, sitting on vast pensions awarded in the private sector? While tax thresholds remain fixed, the triple locked rise per month, from this April, for a state pensioner is a matter of pennies.

Dione Johnson

Hartley Wintney, Hants

Party animals

Sir: As someone who, like Peter Clery (Letters, 25 April), raised livestock for human consumption, I agree with his sentiment, but with a caveat as to the method of slaughter. Take your livestock to your local market whereby you can choose not to have them enter the ritual slaughter food chain.

The government’s animal welfare strategy intends to ban the boiling of crabs and lobster alive, but will allow sheep and cattle to have their throats cut without pre-stunning, in sight and sound of their fellows in the queue, all of whom smell the blood and witness the death they are about to face. Ritual slaughter has no place in a civilised society, but politicians are too scared of the religious issues to do anything about it.

Christopher D. Forrest

Yealmpton, Devon

Cake mix

Sir: Peter Bear’s reference to Pontefract Cakes in his ‘Notes on… Liquorice’ (25 April) reminded me of a little-known role the sweet played in parliamentary history. The very first election of an MP under the 1872 secret ballot act took place in Pontefract on 15 August that year. Appropriately, the wax seal on its historic ballot box, now in the local museum, was stamped not with a civic seal but uniquely with the stamp used by Pontefract cake-makers to emboss the town’s castle image on their liquorice wares.

Peter Saunders

Salisbury, Wiltshire

Dark arts

Sir: A vote of thanks to Peter Bear for providing an unlikely link between Napoleon Bonaparte and Just William. Both are partial to liquorice water, although I wonder whether Napoleon handed it round to his Marshals as generously as William did to his Outlaws.

The Revd Canon John Thackray

St Mary-at-the Elms, Ipswich

More in common

Sir: Your leading article (‘The great divide’, 18 April) correctly identifies that too many graduates find their degrees have not delivered the promised returns. It then rather loses the thread. Students are not ‘the young’. They are roughly half the young – the privileged half. Those who went straight into the workforce include taxpayers who are now being asked to fund the proposed debt relief. It is difficult to see how asking a young hairdresser or electrician to subsidise a young solicitor’s education constitutes ‘making hard choices to help the young’.

Nor is the debt obviously ‘usurious’ or ‘Sisyphean’. It is less a boulder endlessly rolled uphill than one that quietly evaporates for those who struggle and is quickly eliminated by those who prosper.

Redirecting £2 billion from productive taxpayers to a portion of the graduate population is not a hard choice. It is vote-buying, and transparent vote-buying at that.

The genuinely hard choice would be to require universities to underwrite the loans. If a university had to share in the loss when its graduates could not repay, it would rapidly develop an interest in ensuring courses produce the promised returns. That addresses the productivity problem at source. Enlarging the size of the cake is what the young electrician and the young solicitor have in common. Arguing over who gets the bigger slice of the existing one is what keeps them apart.

Peter Ainsworth

Pembrokeshire

East-west divide

Sir: When noting that Welsh voters are drifting towards Plaid Cymru and Reform, James Heale cites a fear of ‘Ulsterisation’ (‘The Valleys of death’, 25 April). This would reflect a disturbing fact to emerge from the 2021 Census: a polarisation of identity in Wales between nationalists in the west and unionists in the east. At the 2024 general election, Plaid’s support in the western seat of Dwyfor Meirionnydd was 54 per cent but less than 5 per cent in the north-east constituency of Alyn and Deeside.

Yet for some Welsh unionists, Ulster also points to a potential solution. Just as legislation in 1920 allowed the north-east of Ireland to opt out of Dublin rule, a regional referendum in north-east Wales might allow it to secede from the Senedd. Meanwhile, the advent of regional government in England raises the question of whether the new mayoral authority of Cheshire-Warrington could be expanded to include the counties of north-east Wales, allowing a Welsh county like Flintshire to continue with a form of devolved government but within a region that is geographically closer than Cardiff and to which it has strong economic links. Devolution was meant to bring power closer to the people, not promote divisive national identities. It is time to reassert that original aim.

Richard Kelly

Buckley, Flintshire

Sticky issue

Sir: As an avid TV watcher in my earlier years, I shared Rory Sutherland’s irritation that Top Cat was always referred to as Boss Cat by BBC announcers (25 April). It didn’t make sense. However, I don’t think Blue Peter presenters were referring to Sellotape when they talked about ‘sticky-backed plastic’. Surely it was Fablon, rolls of brightly coloured sheets of vinyl with a self-adhesive backing, ideal for transforming shoeboxes etc into attractive containers for various odds and ends.

Fred Lillie

Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Rabbit, run

Sir: I refer to Francis Nation-Dixon’s letter of 11 April regarding the rabbits of Sussex. I went to boarding school near the downs in Sussex in the early to mid-1950s. We used to have rabbit stew several times a week as a cheap staple meal. One day it just stopped, as myxomatosis arrived. Instead we were fed delicious sausages and fishcakes. Where I now live in Warwickshire, the rabbits seem to have disappeared in the past 12 months. Back to sausages, I suppose.

Ian Wasse

Hampton in Arden, Solihull