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To The Times

As Alice Thomson points out, children are being groomed to gamble online, but they are also being bombarded by gambling advertising on TV. The UK gambling industry spent £312m on advertising in 2016 – a 63% increase since 2012. Gambling advertising on TV in the UK has increased by 43% since 2012, and a great deal is shown in the commercial breaks of live sporting events. Some 95% of TV advert breaks during live UK football matches feature at least one gambling advert.

Perhaps we should follow Australia and ban gambling advertising during televised live sport as well as for a period before and after the event is shown. The inevitable consequences of allowing this normalisation of gambling to go unchecked will be an increase in problem gamblers, mental health issues, financial distress and family breakdown. Lord Chadlington, House of Lords, London

To The Daily Telegraph

Nick Timothy is correct in saying that our whole criminal justice system is flawed, but he misses one vital point: the need for retribution.

Today, retribution is regarded as unacceptable, with rehabilitation the sine qua non, but any justice system that ignores this requirement loses public support.

Our primitive ancestors understood this. Crime hurts, and the hurt is doubled if victims see the guilty free and laughing while their pain persists. But personal vengeance destroys communities. Our ancestors therefore took from the individual the right to pursue their own justice in return for a contract from the community that it would avenge their hurt. For decades now, society has reneged on its side of the contract. Crimes are left uninvestigated and the criminals let off lightly, while the victims’ suffering persists.

The desire for retribution may be ignoble, but it is human and must be humanely accommodated. As with John Worboys, our justice system

To The Times

Philip Collins is right that trust in immigration policy needs confidence about individual identity and entitlement, but all his arguments assume that Britain will remain permanently dependent on large-scale migration. Immigration can be beneficial if selective, but need never be massive. The present dependency is pathological and unnecessary. The NHS is unique in Europe in depending on foreign staff since its inception, as a badly planned and poorly funded nationalised industry. We can and should train most of our own.

Dependency on EU migration is new since the late 1990s. It arises from a sudden huge expansion of labour

To The Guardian

It is very dispiriting to see the children’s commissioner joining the ranks of politicians, journalists and other commentators in pointing the finger at “poor” schools to explain the “North- South divide” in secondary school educational attainment.

The only significant divide in England is the one between London and the rest of the country. And for the few people still left interested in basing national policy on facts, there is an emphatic answer to the question, “Why are London schools so successful?” The research conducted by Professor Simon Burgess for the University of Bristol into the “London effect” showed that the difference in pupil progress, from the end of primary school to the completion of GCSES, “is entirely accounted for by ethnic composition” and has been so for at least the past decade.

White British pupils have the lowest progress measure, both in London and in the rest of England. But whereas white British pupils account for about 85% of all pupils in the rest of the country, they account for only 35% in London. Or, to put it more bluntly, London schools have on average almost two-and-ahalf times fewer of the lowestperforming pupils as schools in the rest of England.

Teachers and head teachers in London have worked very hard over the years to raise standards, but so have their colleagues elsewhere in the country. It doesn’t help them, or their pupils and parents, to have journalists and politicians, and now the children’s commissioner, ignoring the most blatantly clear evidence that the main reason why London’s schools have been so effective is a factor entirely beyond their control. Chris Dunne, retired London head teacher