LETTERS

Vital post offices

i WELCoME the Mail’s campaign to save our post offices. There is always a queue at the one in my small market town.

We have only one bank and there are more defibrillators than aTMs.

The planners want the town to quadruple in size, but we won’t get any more services.

FAY GOODWIN, Lutterworth, Leics. i aM a retired sub-postmaster who feels the pain of my working colleagues who have had to take a 10 per cent cut in transactions.

in contrast, the former Post office CEo, Paula vennells, was paid over £718,300 in 2017/18 and made a CBE in the new year’s Honours. ALLENTON FISHER, Okehampton, Devon. i aM all for saving our vital post offices, but the management who have acted dishonourably towards sub-postmasters should be replaced and not given access to any more taxpayers’ money. ZARAYNA PRADYER,

Chessington, Surrey. SUrELy any money needed to prop up post offices should come from the shareholders. This is what privatisation means.

MIKE JONES, South Witham, Lincs.

Toxic lease

i aM living in a home with a toxic lease (Mail). i discovered years after my purchase that the lease on my flat allowed the landlord to double the ground rent every ten years.

This was not mentioned by the developers when i bought the property in 2006.

They sold the lease to a company in israel with a bank account in the British virgin islands.

Together with other owners in the development, we are trying to buy our leases. our surveyor has valued mine at £3,750, but to my shock, the counter offer to settle is £18,500.

in addition, the city council, who are the freeholders of the land, are demanding £2,750.

in addition to buying out everyone up the tenure chain, we have to pay everyone’s legal and surveyor’s costs. in the meantime, our properties can’t be re-mortgaged and solicitors acting for new buyers are advising against purchase.

The city council received value for money when it sold the land and buildings to the developers, who got full market value for the houses and flats when they sold them to buyers like me. from that point on, it’s been greed, greed, greed!

Mrs DENISE HOLT, Manchester.

Incredible hulk

HMS Queen Elizabeth is referred to as the royal navy’s most powerful ship. However, through incompetent planning it is, sadly, a manned floating hulk, invoking fear in no one.

When will it become a fully equipped naval warship, suitable for the 21st century? i question whether the royal navy will have enough operational ships to provide an escort. as regards the captain being ‘reassigned’ after alleged misuse of an official car, a quiet word in his ear should have been sufficient.

P. BENNISON, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear. HoW the rules have changed concerning official transport.

Serving on HMS Superb in 1954-55, when we visited Long Beach in California, the admiral’s car was disembarked. one day the coxswain said he had use of the transport and would we like a trip to Hollywood? off went a few of us and had our photo taken at grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

JAMES ARNOTT, Yeovil, Somerset. i WaS the Land rover driver of HMS kent, a guided missile destroyer, in the Sixties. The vehicle was used for all sorts of unofficial trips, and when officers were driven for a run ashore, no one cared.

SID ANNING, Rochester, Kent.

Saviour surgeon

HoW wonderful that a surgeon was able to operate on a baby in the womb to treat spina bifida (Mail).

i was born in 1939 with this condition in the days when families were told that nothing could be done. But i was fortunate.

i was born at home in Pudsey as one of twins and was admitted to a Leeds hospital at one month old.

a visiting surgeon was willing to operate to close my spine and the surgery was a success.

i have led a normal life, had three children and have no problem in walking. But i have never taken life for granted, as it could have been so different.

A. RUDGE, Walsall, W. Mids.

Feckless parents

fivE MPs state that ‘ one in three children live in households that struggle to afford to buy enough healthy food to meet the official nutrition guidelines’ (Letters).

While i’m not doubting this to be the case, may i point out that a family with two children gets £34.40 per week in child benefit. With shrewd planning, home cooking and careful shopping, this could keep the children at least above the baseline.

CEC LOWRY, Stockport, Gtr Manchester. THE reason so many children are

malnourished is that their parents are unable to manage finances, cook a proper meal from scratch or prioritise their family’s needs.

Bringing back school basic domestic science lessons that cover finances and cooking would help. I’ve worked alongside children’s services on home visits, stepping in ashtrays and tripping over pizza boxes and beer cans while the fridge is empty.

While some genuinely struggle to cope and deserve state assistance, many more parents have no concept of the responsibility they owe their children.

DAVE ELKINS, Portsmouth, Hants. YES, you can buy six doughnuts for £1, but children can each pick up a free piece of fruit at Morrisons.

The biggest problem isn’t poverty, it’s time. No one bothers to cook from scratch any more.

You can make a shepherd’s pie for the family at a fraction of the cost of a ready meal or a takeaway. If parents put down their iPads and mobile phones for just an hour, they could rustle up a healthy meal.

I raised four daughters on a low wage and couldn’t afford to buy them designer clothes or shoes, but they never went hungry.

Name and address supplied. IN MY local supermarket, a large box of cornflakes is £1 and a kilo of porridge oats is 70p. If children are arriving at school hungry, it is due to bad parenting.

MIKE DURAND, Penzance, Cornwall. FIVE small apples in Tesco, 49p; seven mini bananas in Lidl, 99p; and a punnet of plums in Asda, 89p. It’s about education, not poverty.

KATE CARR, Bicester, Oxon.

Button up, chaps!

I WAS delighted to read that Jacob Rees- Mogg only removes his jacket in the bedroom (Mail). For everyone else in the public eye, dress standards have gone to pot.

I see men in shorts and T-shirts on their way to work. I remember the days when no matter the heat of summer, men not only kept their suit jackets on, but wore them fully buttoned. BARRY CARROLL,

London SE28. HOW long should men’s shorts be?

The holiday adverts show a woman on the beach in a skimpy bikini with a man in baggy shorts down to his knees. As a skinny old chap who can still get into the shorts I bought 30 years ago, I resent being expected to appear in something that resembles the knee-lengths I had to wear as a boy. MIKE OGDEN, Worksop, Notts.