Letters: Fixing the housing market will take more than cheap election bribes

First past the post

SIR – The first-past-the-post electoral system is no longer fit for purpose.

Based on recent opinion polls, Labour will win a landslide with only 27 per cent of the registered 48 million voters backing it. This picture gets even worse when unregistered eligible voters are accounted for.

With the Right-of-centre vote split between the Conservatives and Reform UK, under the current system they will be barely represented in Parliament. As a result the resentment felt by the country towards politicians will only increase after the election.

It is time to adopt proportional representation – and quickly, before we become an autocracy with disastrous consequences for all.

Ian Forster
Wrenthorpe, West Yorkshire
 

D-Day pride

SIR – I was five when D-Day took place (Letters, June 8). My father wrote in his diary at the time that I was very quick to spot the planes flying over our house on their way to France.

The ceremonies of the past few days have been uplifting, although I was close to tears much of the time. What a lot of work has been going on, unknown to most of us, to prepare for these events. 

Thank you to all who took part.

Margaret Durrant
Sonning Common, Oxfordshire

SIR – Full marks to the BBC for its coverage of events at the wonderful British Normandy Memorial in Ver-sur-Mer.

It was an incredibly emotional and moving event, which will have brought tears to the eyes of those present and those watching from afar. 

For me, one of the stand-out moments was seeing the care and tenderness with which a much younger soldier guided a frail veteran as he lay his wreath on the monument. It was truly special.

Patricia Reid 
Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire

SIR – At an all-boys school in the early 1950s, our entire teaching staff was male, and almost all had been in one military service or another. 

My form master had been second in command of a landing craft. The commander was loathed by his crew and, in one of the landing exercises leading up to D-Day, they had beached at high-tide, bridged across a sandbar. 

As the tide receded, the craft slowly broke its back. The entire crew cheered.

Philip Styles
Cheddar, Somerset 
 

Trump the felon

SIR – Donald Trump broke the law (Comment, June 2). He was found guilty on all 34 counts by a 12-person jury of his peers. 

Editorials suggesting that the charges should not have been brought are entirely beside the point. The New York County District Attorney can bring a charge against anyone whom he has probable cause to believe broke the law. And Mr Trump did. He is now a convicted felon.

In order to charge Mr Trump with a crime, the District Attorney had to present the evidence to a grand jury: 23 people who sit in a room and listen to testimony. They decided that there was probable cause to believe that Mr Trump broke the law.

When the case went to trial, it was then up to a jury to decide if he broke the law beyond a reasonable doubt. If either the grand jury or the trial jury had decided that the charges should not have been brought, then they could have acquitted him. They did not.

The lies put out by Mr Trump and his Maga supporters go to the very foundations of justice in America. A major reason for the American Revolution was the use of vice-admiralty courts, which had no jury, by the British to enforce the law. 

A jury – 12 citizens picked at random – is put between the defendant and the sovereign to safeguard the defendant from arbitrary charges. The jury, not the government, decides if a defendant is guilty.

Imagine if a convicted felon is elected president. He will destroy the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. What law enforcement agency will deal with him? How would the military deal with him? Would anyone want to accept a medal from a convicted felon? Or have policy made by one?

Mr Trump and his enablers are a clear and present danger to democracy. I hope Americans will see this and vote for Joe Biden.

Mitchell E Ignatoff
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, United States

SIR – Publicly insulting the judge while awaiting sentencing does not strike me as being a particularly bright idea (“Trump spares no enemies in raging attack on ‘sham’ trial”, report, June 1).

Derek Wellman
Lincoln
 

Straight to streaming

SIR – In his article about the failure of Hollywood (May 30), Ben Lawrence used The Holdovers as an example of a film that streamed soon after release at the cinema. But at least The Holdovers received a cinema release; so many films now go straight to streaming.

I recently saw The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare at the cinema while on holiday in America. I subsequently discovered that I was lucky to see it because, despite the fact that it has a British director (Guy Ritchie), a British star (Henry Cavill), a particularly British subject (a secret British military unit in the Second World War) and is based on a British author’s book, it will not receive a UK cinema release, but will go straight to streaming.

As a life-long lover of cinema and film, I despair that, unless I subscribe to every streaming platform, I am denied the ability to see so many films, especially as the streamers rarely release their films on DVD.

It is disappointing that filmmakers such as Guy Ritchie do not insist in their contracts that their films are released on the big screen, which is where they were made to be seen.

Jane Mitchell
Rayleigh, Essex
 

Tough French beef

SIR – Reading that the caterers at the Cannes Film Festival had eschewed beef on their menus (report, May 20) may come as some relief to many. 

Having lived in France for 17 years, and previously in the Vale of Belvoir in Leicestershire for 35, with superb local butchers, I can say categorically that French beef is mostly inedible. 

The breeds used seem to have been reared from what were originally draft animals, and therefore do not make for good eating. 

Moreover, the French don’t hang the carcass after slaughter. The result is tough and flavourless beef. So there may be more to the festival’s decision than meets the eye.

Margaret Baker
Juvigny les Vallées, Manche, France 
 

Generous dame

SIR – Vera Lynn (Letters, June 2) was a wonderful and generous person. 

We ran an art event in London and, as she painted, we inquired if she would exhibit at the event and also open it for us. 

When asked what she wanted, she said: “Just send a car, and provide a quiet room”. We sent the car, but she had to share the room with some of our noisy children.

John Hope-Hawkins
Towcester, Northamptonshire
 

Trunks packed off ahead of their passengers

SIR – I, too, remember my trunk travelling by train (Letters, June 2), both to and from boarding school – and never accompanied. Address labels were clearly marked on the reverse side with the letters PLA, which stood for passengers’ luggage in advance. They never went astray.

Malcolm Watson
Ryde, Isle of Wight

SIR – In the 1950s I used Great Western Railway’s luggage-in-advance service. Trunks were sent a few days before the end of the holidays and before the end of term. 

Occasionally there was a delay in the arrival of trunks at school, which resulted in the joy of another few days of wearing home clothes. In my case, everything possible was sent to school in advance. Had this not been so I would have had to carry a heavy suitcase up a very steep hill. 

Charles Lane
Warminster, Wiltshire
 

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