The Spectator

Investing in farming Sir: Martin Vander Weyer (Any other business, 13 January) says, unhelpfully and inaccurately, that subsidies ‘absurdly’ favour bigger farms. As we look towards life after Brexit, instead of debating the merits of small vs large, the government should incentivise good rather than bad. My family’s farming business, Beeswax Dyson Farming, farms 33,000 acres directly and has invested £75 million in technology, training, soil improvement and environmental stewardship over the past five years. These are hardly the acts of a mere ‘wealthy landowner’, in his dismissive parlance. Subsidies we receive go directly into the activities that they are designed to support but are dwarfed by our own investments.

Long lives and pension pots Sir: Jon Moynihan is too optimistic about the prospects for further increasing life expectancy, and too gloomy about those of the pensions industry (‘Falling Short’, 6 January). The wondrous advancements of medical science have offered little to solve the most pervasive problem we now face: declining mental health. It seems unlikely that society will chose to invest endlessly in repairing bodies to extend lifespans, when the minds relating to those bodies have already been lost. So the viability of pension providers is not as parlous as suggested.

A church for all people Sir: I enjoyed reading Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s account of debates in the Church of England in the interval between our parish mass for Advent 3 and our service of nine lessons and carols (‘Mission impossible?’, 16 December). She asks whether the church is planning ‘a back-door “evangelical takeover”’. The simple answer is no. Yes, the Archbishops’ Council has helped to fund churches such as St Luke’s Gas Street in Birmingham, St Philip’s in Salford, and St George’s Gateshead — though it is a bit harsh to dismiss these churches, which are effective in reaching students, young people and families, as ‘centres for instant conversion’.