The Tories should foot the bill for Trussonomics chaos

Our previous prime minister, during her short term in office and in collusion with her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, created financial mayhem against learned advice. Who needs experts?

At a minimum, it should be up to the Conservative Party to make good the £50bn shortfall to help fill the enormous black hole in Britain’s finances. Saying sorry – not that anybody has or will – simply serves no purpose. An apology is no collateral for paying unavoidable bills.

Gunter Straub London

Faux Tory outrage

So Michael Gove has declared that it “beggars belief” that a twoyear-old child died because of the mould in the flat he was living in. Did he find that it similarly “beggared belief” when his fellow Conservative MPs voted against the 2016 bill that would have required all rented homes to be fit for human habitation? Strange, but I don’t recall his outrage about that.

This is the typical Tory, let’s roll someone out to say how dreadful that the thing we could have stopped from happening, but didn’t, has now gone and happened. That, Mr Gove, is what “beggars belief”.

Karen Brittain York

The death of a small child, whether during a small boat journey, a fire in a tower block, or due to poor housing is an emotive thing. The cause of Awaab Ishak’s death – poor housing – is a widespread problem. I lived in such a building in the 1970s that had been built 10 years or so earlier. It caused a deal of unhappiness and family strife.

As I built my career and experience in construction and energy systems, I understood the obvious cause of such problems – grounded in the same fundamentally flawed system that later led to the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

The need to bring the housing that will still be with us in 2050 up to decent standards presents an immense challenge. Much of this is related to the poor detailing – and especially damp prevention – that afflicts older buildings and any part of them that is close to the ground or affected by wind-driven rain.

We have millions of such homes, and whilst the cost of demolition and rebuilding will be significant, they – like the Sixties tower blocks – need to be demolished. The alternative is likely to be repair works that will be lengthy, costly, and probably found to be inadequate when the occupiers move back in after three or six months. And where will they stay during that time?

This is a climate-related problem in every sense of that word. Damp and mould will be the biggest consequence of poor quality UK building works, as we begin to insulate our homes decades after we should have started.

The UK has an arsenal of bullets that need to be bitten. This is just another. When will we learn?

Michael Mann Shrewsbury

Sit back, enjoy the show

Dear America, Donald Trump has done an excellent job of destroying the cancer of right-wing extremism in the US than anyone else, so why not let him get on with it?

I suggest there is a strong argument for sitting back and enjoying the show. Trump has worked wonders by packing the Supreme Court with religious bigots and promoting unelectable candidates – and in doing so, woken normal folk up to the fact that you cannot take democracy for granted.

Now he’s wreaking havoc in the GOP with those who have for decades ensured that Republicans punch way above their electoral weight. Let DT at ’em I say.

Amanda Baker Edinburgh

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