LETTERS

One rule for one...

Muirfield, the Honourable Company of edinburgh Golfers, has overturned its men- only policy because the royal & Ancient refused to stage the Open there while it didn’t admit women as members.

But while Muirfield always allowed women to play — including in mixed matches — the sanctimonious r&A maintains its men- only policy for players in the Open. MARTIN BURGESS,

Beckenham, Kent.

A Mrs — and proud

feMinisM has been a disaster for women. We have some important equal rights, such as the right to vote, but in the quest to be equal to males we’ve forgotten what’s special about being female.

When i was little, my parents rightly told me that if i worked hard i could do anything i wanted. i went to university and have a string of letters after my name. But my proudest moment was marrying my husband and getting those three letters (Mrs) in front of my name.

Why? Because it shows i can give another person’s needs equal importance to my own, that i can share my life, my happiness, sadness, joy and anger with another person, that i’ve made a commitment to that person, that i will be honest and faithful.

i’m proud of being a Mrs and feel angry that on official forms i’m slowly having this right taken away from me in favour of Ms.

The desire to be equal to men has led to women being forced to act like males in many ways. We’re urged not to let our hormones get the better of us at work, to be more competitive in nature and have pressure put on us about when we’re going to have a family and the cost to the organisation we work for.

We have a special gift that men do not: the ability to carry a baby and the biology to be able to feed that baby. instead of working against our natural biology and trying to ignore it, we should work with it.

i’m proud to be a Mrs, proud to be female and want to stop society from judging me for this. i know it isn’t politically correct or fashionable, but for those of us who do feel this way, please leave us be. Mrs SAMANTHA HOUSTON,

Birmingham.

Thirst for water clarity

THere’s a tendency among the public to take for granted what lies under their feet. When you turn on the tap, you assume drinkable water will emerge. When you pull the chain, you expect your effluent to disappear out of sight and mind.

But for the past ten years, all has not been as well as Thames Water is claiming. Macquarie funds, domiciled in tax-haven luxembourg, bought Thames Water in 2006. At the time, Thames’s equity capital was £1.5 billion and outstanding debt £3 billion. Today, the equity capital stands at £3 billion but the debt is £ 10 billion, leaving the company much less financially sustainable.

during Macquarie’s stewardship of Thames, much of the new debt (£6 billion) was raised via a Cayman island subsidiary.

The Macquarie takeover was largely funded by third-party debt and in subsequent years this debt was repaid by new Cayman island debt raised against Thames Water’s (for which read customers’) credit.

All this has been legal and the regulator, Ofwat, seems to have approved, but is this what the public, and Thames Water’s 12 million customers expect of their privately owned, public service monopoly supplier?

TONY Lord BERKLEY, House of Lords, London WC1.

Servicing Brexit fallout

THe Government’s rejection of the lords’ Brexit Bill amendment to

guarantee residency to eu nationals already in the uK, while unsurprising, has done nothing to alleviate concerns regarding the future of the country’s fourth-largest employer: the hospitality sector.

There’s no question that the health of this country’s hotel, restaurant, catering and leisure businesses will be severely impacted by any restrictions placed on the rights of eu workers in the sector — one which contributes 10 per cent of our total GdP.

The uncertainty over the future of eu workers’ rights is already causing pain for hospitality organisations, with falling job-applicant numbers and many of those eu nationals already thinking about leaving.

The uK’s Brexit negotiations are putting the needs of a vibrant employment sector in jeopardy. We call on the Government to urgently express its intent around the future for eu workers in the uK. CHRIS MUMFORD and

THOMAS MIELKE, Aethos Consulting Group, London.

Time to reform attitudes

TrevOr PHilliPs makes some good points on reform of the House of lords, but as the lord who featured in the BBC film in my electric wheelchair, i thought he spoiled it with his snide attack on wheelchair-users (Mail).

Mr Phillips has changed his tune about multiculturalism since he left the equalities Commission. His time there was characterised by a heavy emphasis on tackling discrimination against all minorities except disabled people.

They were very low on his list of priorities and little seems to have changed. The other day, the Government equalities Office answered a parliamentary question i asked, confirming that since 2015 it has issued 75 press releases on transgender and transexual issues but only 12 on disability issues.

i don’t know how many transgender and transexual people exist, but there are 800,000 wheelchair users, including only six of us in the House of lords. i imagine Mr Phillips is keen to see more women, more black and ethnic minority and homosexual and transgender people in the lords, so why the snide comment about wheelchair-users?

is he trying to imply that peers in wheelchairs are idle, gaga or not pulling their weight? does he think it’s a lifestyle choice and we prefer sitting in chairs to using our legs?

if you look at the work done by Baronesses Brixton, Thomas, Masham and Tani Grey Thompson, a former Olympic champion, all in wheelchairs, you’ll see they have contributed far more to public life than Mr Phillips and his former equalities Commission.

We may have lost the use of our legs, but that just means we have to work harder. DAVID Lord BLENCATHRA, House of Lords, London WC1.

Foul play

THe ugly performance by Manchester united against Chelsea, and eden Hazard in particular, only serves to bring to a head the abhorrent system of team fouling by different players in order to prevent any one player from being sent off for constant law-breaking.

That Man united, a club rightfully commended for playing the game attractively over many years, should stoop to such appalling behaviour only shows the extent to which this practice has become acceptable.

The situation is not helped by the often repeated comments by explayers at Tv games who offer excuses for outright cheating that can, at times, result in serious injury.

We’re often advised that football is ‘the beautiful game’, but this doesn’t hold water when some great thug can take out a superior player illegally, often, we suspect, at the

behest of the thug’s manager. It will, of course, be said that stamping out this practice will render tackling irrelevant.

not so. Tackling is an admirable art, and for too long now, far too many defenders have no idea how to tackle. It’s high time they learned. CLIVE WHITFIELD, South Reston, Lincs.

Identity crisis

HAvInG researched Jack the Ripper’s identity (Mail) for 21 years, I can reveal the truth.

Using only the internet and the british Library, I’ve worked through thousands of pages from books and websites to get to the man behind the murders.

He is the famous Robert Louis Stevenson. He was in London at the times of the murders, he researched ‘ladies of the night’ for his books and poems, he refers to himself in Dr Jekyll, he hated loose

women and he had medical skills, which he had practised on cadavers in Scotland.

In his book Underwoods he refers to his hatred of women. He had a carriage in which he loved trawling the streets of London at night. He carried a satchel that contained medical instruments.

He was questioned by police about the murders but all the records were destroyed in a fire at the police station he attended, where a highranking officer pulled him out

of the interview. This was referred to in a letter, which has since been lost.

Stevenson had an illness that used to enrage him into a fury. He also drank heavily to try to combat the devil inside him. The murders stopped when he left britain and he died a few years later, but I believe he murdered many more women in Scotland before the London killings. I’m now researching those.

CARL CLARK, Thetford, Norfolk.

Granny heartache

I CAn understand the heartache of being a long-distance granny (Mail), but you can also be a long-distance granny when you live close by.

I live about 25 miles from my four grandsons, but so far in 2017 we’ve seen two of them for about three hours.

Just a phone call would be welcome. ROSEMARY SEWELL,

Bracknell, Berks.