Letters: How can Britain stand up to the Russian threat with such depleted defences?

Plus: cutting British steel; the King’s prostate; shorter Shakespeare; cheapest train tickets; a new Lord Chamberlain; and pneumatic tubes

SIR – Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, is of course correct that Britain and its allies must not appease Russia (report, January 19). 
However, unless we sort our Armed Forces out fast, appeasement is going to be our only option in the short term. As has been highlighted in these pages many times, the Army, Navy and Royal Air Force would be unable to sustain the defence of the United Kingdom, let alone meet any commitments to our allies. Our defences have been run down and are now dysfunctional. 
Lord Cameron’s decisions as prime minister are partly to blame for this; but, in truth, there has been a lack of vision on defence for the past 30 years.
Alastair MacMillanPort Glasgow, Renfrewshire
SIR – A Nato official believes that all-out war with Russia within 20 years is a very real possibility.
This makes for sobering reading in Britain, which has a population of about 70 million and a depleted Army of less than 65,000 deployable troops – meaning that, for every 1,000 or so British residents, there is one soldier to defend them. Russia, meanwhile, has increased military spending to 40 per cent of the national budget.
British politicians should hang their heads in shame for reducing our ability to defend ourselves to practically nothing. But at least we’ll be able to get from London to Birmingham by train 15 minutes quicker than before.
Simon CrowleyKemsing, Kent
SIR – Further evidence of our not-so-special relationship with the United States (Letters, January 19) is to be found in My Life and Times, the autobiography of Jerome K Jerome. 
In 1914 he was dispatched to America to gauge the degree of support for Great Britain in the war. “The general feeling was, if anything, pro-German,” he recalled, “tempered in the East by traditional sentiment for France. I failed to unearth any enthusiasm for England in spite of my having been commissioned to discover it. I have sometimes wondered if England and America really do love one another as much as our journalists and politicians say they do.”
Jeremy NicholasFormer presidentJerome K Jerome SocietyGreat Bardfield, Essex
 
SIR – Tata Steel says 3,000 jobs are at risk at its steel works in Port Talbot (report, January 19), with traditional blast furnaces making way for eco furnaces. No matter, it seems, that generations of families have lived and worked in this community, producing steel down the decades. 
Is this what the green jobs revolution really means?
Christopher HuntSwanley, Kent
SIR – I am bewildered by our Government. How can it be acceptable for this nation to lose the capacity to produce its own steel? 
There has to be an acceptance that certain products are of strategic importance to us, and steel is one of them. Others are fertiliser, silicon chips, oil and gas – and, of course, food. Exporting these strategic capabilities, then importing the end products that we can no longer produce ourselves, leaves us more vulnerable in an increasingly dangerous world. There is an urgent need for a new industrial, energy and agricultural strategy.
Nick GreenLondon SW6
 
SIR – Alison Watson (Letters, January 19) wonders whether the strict ethos of Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela Community School encourages “critical thinking”.
In order to think critically, one requires self-discipline and self-control – precisely the qualities that pupils at Michaela are developing.
Angela HayesCarlisle, Cumbria 
SIR – I still recall the Conservative Party Conference I attended several years ago where a young woman was invited to speak and, at the end of her speech, was met with total silence in the hall – followed by a prolonged standing ovation. That young woman was Katharine Birbalsingh.
Sandra HawkeAndover, Hampshire
 
SIR – It’s great that the King’s example is encouraging more men to pay closer attention to their prostate health (report, January 19). Now, what about the waiting times?
Steve HaynesSidmouth, Devon
SIR – I applaud the King’s openness about his prostate treatment but would like to add a word of warning about testing for prostate cancer, based on personal experience. 
The PSA test and MRI scan can be inaccurate, and prostate biopsies have inherent risks. With a family history of prostate cancer, I had two extremely high PSA scores, which led to an MRI scan that suggested serious cancer. 
An expertly executed biopsy, however, resulted in a case of sepsis, for which I was initially treated – with worrying delay – at an A&E, then in a trauma ward on drips for two days and nights. Yet my results from the biopsy were negative. 
A subsequent PSA test, taken rapidly at my efficient GP surgery, showed that I had the “prostate of a young man”. I hope a more reliable test will be rolled out soon. Financial support for research is vital.
Robin SandersonOxford
 
SIR – I have had a letter from HMRC (report, January 19) telling me that it owes me some money. 
In order to claim this, I have to telephone HMRC. However, the waiting time on the phone makes this difficult. I now intend to adopt a similar strategy every time I owe money. I wonder if it will work when I am supposed to pay HMRC.
Robert PughCarmarthen
 
SIR – I was interested in your report (January 17), “RSC set to woo tourists with shorter Shakespeare plays”.
Some may feel, as Polonius says in Hamlet, “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”. And given the reactions to Polonius’s speeches in the play, one suspects that the playwright himself may have approved.
Ron EllisWendover, Buckinghamshire
SIR – The Royal Shakespeare Company doesn’t need to cut Shakespeare’s plays in half to make them more popular. It just needs to make them clearly audible.
Last year’s three-hour production of As You Like It, starring 73-year-old Geraldine James, was immensely popular because the mature cast enunciated clearly and projected their voices.
I will give the planned King Lear in Ukrainian (without surtitles) a miss; but for all I could understand of some recent mumbled productions, they might as well have been in a foreign tongue.
Dr John DohertyStratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
 
SIR – May I add my voice to the calls for smaller items of clothing (Letters, January 18)?
I am 77 years young and still wish to look smart, but am in despair about the length of sleeves in particular. I have browsed multiple racks of sweaters in M&S and not one had shorter sleeves. As for the petite range in Next, there is nothing petite about it. My shoe size – two – also poses difficulties.
Jocelyn MillerDunfermline, Fife
 
SIR – I went to boarding school in Oxford and, like Ian Brent-Smith (Letters, January 19), spent a lot of time on the frozen river Cherwell during the winter of 1963.
We were unable to play field hockey because of the snow, so we scoured the junk shops for ice skates and played ice hockey on the river instead. 
I could only find a pair of speed skates, which were not very manoeuvrable, and I still bear the scars of a friend’s figure skate on my right index finger. I don’t remember ever wearing gloves.
We did get back to hockey on grass towards the end of March when the snow had mostly gone, but the ground was hard and we played only once or twice before the end of term.
Tim TaylerBristol
SIR – During the winter of 1963 I was a postgraduate student in London. Most pipes were frozen; we asked around among friends who could offer a hot bath, and would proceed en masse on the Underground with sponge bags and towels, some carrying bath robes and loofahs.
However, I think the winter of 1947 was worse. There were power cuts, coal was frozen hard in depots and potatoes could not be dug out of the ground. We often had lessons by the light of paraffin lamps. 
Yes, we wore shorts and I got chilblains (from which I still suffer to this day), but overall no harm was done. Perhaps we had been inured to hardship by the war years.
Jeremy Hamilton-MillerTwickenham, Middlesex
 
SIR – My daughter and I regularly travel to Ipswich for the football by rail. 
We have found that by far the cheapest tickets are bought not online or by doing battle with the machine at the station (report, January 18) but with cash on the train.
Patrick SmithGreat Yarmouth, Norfolk
 
SIR – The ancient office of Lord Chamberlain will soon have a fresh incumbent (report, January 16). 
The new holder of this august post will no doubt be relieved to know that about eight years ago the duties ceased to include walking backwards before the Sovereign at state functions. Those who were quite good at it in the past sometimes had to cope with an unruly companion, the Lord Steward. 
Viscount Sandhurst, a very successful Lord Chamberlain under George V, recorded in his diary what happened at a state banquet for the President of Brazil in May 1919: “The long walk backwards from the Bow Room where the King and Queen received to the Ball Room I managed all right, but Farquhar [Lord Steward] was awful. Had it been a race Farquhar would have been disqualified for bumping and he was never in step. He bumped me, then recoiled and bumped again.” 
Farquhar, about whom I have published a short biography, survived for another three years before finally being sacked.
Lord Lexden (Con)London SW1
 
SIR – The renaissance of a pneumatic tube delivery system in Germany (Letters, January 18) reminds me of my grandfather’s furniture store about 70 years ago. 
In those days there was no credit, only cash. To make payments my grandfather used a wire railway, which conveyed cash on overhead cables from the showroom floor to a secure cashier upstairs. The propulsion was provided by a catapult system. The change then followed a similar route, and had usually arrived by the time delivery had been arranged. As a child, I was fascinated.
Richard BrownHeathfield, East Sussex
SIR – I recall the use of Lamson pneumatic tubes in the British Museum Reading Room in the late 1960s and 1970s.
These were employed to convey readers’ book applications from the Reading Room to adjacent bookstacks, so that books could be fetched. The system worked well for many years.
Edmund M B KingSt Albans, Hertfordshire
 
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