Letters From A Tory

Dear David Cameron,

So here we are.  After the rollercoaster of a ride that has been the last six months as leader of the Conservative Party, one could reasonably argue that it all comes down to one speech.  The polls are still being fairly unkind to the Conservatives, although the fact that Labour have just had their party conference obviously skews the polls considerably.

Softening stamp duty, going after benefits claimants, tax breaks for families - these are all good things, but it’s not enough.  Crime, the EU and immigration is where the battle lines between yourself and Gordon Brown must be drawn.  You have no choice but to boldly state to the country why you as the Conservative leader offer a genuine and respectable alternative to Labour.  Needless to say you have to highlight Labour’s weaknesses as much as possible in addition to stating your own case - even so, your message must be a powerful one.  You have to convince Conservatives to support you, you have to bring back the voters who have jumped ship and gone over to Gordon Brown, you have to tempt some Liberal voters, and I’m sure you can chip away at UKIP and the BNP if you get your message right.

I don’t know whether the possible re-emergence of foot and mouth disease plus the bluetongue virus might make Gordon Brown think twice about an autumn election.  For now, you must assume that it won’t.  I don’t envy you Mr Cameron, as you cannot afford to have anything less than a perfectly choreographed conference with no infighting, no backstabbing, and no dissenters.

Best wishes, and good luck.

A.Tory

Dear Andy Coulson,

I appreciate that you are busy with the Conservative Party conference, but how on earth did you let so many Labour blunders in one day go completely unnoticed?  I’m sure you were keen to get Cameron on a couple of the front pages.  However, a bad day for Labour would have been the perfect springboard for our conference.

The new Ministry of Justice has had a shocking day in the press.  Firstly, they scrapped the £2.6 billion scheme for rehabilitating offenders, which was labelled “expensive, bureaucratic, and added nothing to the front line”.  Secondly, Jack Straw was branded ‘irresponsible’ for his suggestions about new laws on self-defence that the Labour Party had already rejected a few years ago on the grounds that they were unnecessary, and police chiefs expressed serious concern that this type of law would lead to a rise in vigilantism.  Thirdly, Jacqui Smith at the Home Office should have been torn apart for having no idea about the level of immigration in this country and the horrifying predictions for how many immigrants will come into this country over the next few decades.

This was a missed opportunity to score political points over Labour, and the truth is that the Conservatives cannot afford to miss opportunities at the moment.  Hopefully these issues will be brought to the fore at the Conservative Party conference.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear Polly Toynbee,

As a raving Leftie I’m sure your readers are used to your anti-Conservative rants.  Bizarrely enough, I sensed that you were trying to offer some kind words of advice to the Conservatives in your column this morning, but even when you try to be nice your arguments simply don’t add up due to your frequent and often deliberate bias.

Like many other people, you completely misinterpreted George Osborne’s comments to suit your own purposes.  All he was saying was that you don’t have to stop talking about immigration, taxes, etc when you start discussing more ‘recent’ topics such as the environment.  This is a very sensible viewpoint and does not indicate any rift in the party whatsoever - but nice try.  To suggest that Steve Hilton and Andy Coulson work against each other is ridiculous, seeing as Hilton works as a personal advisor whereas Coulson works on communications for the whole party.  And then, as with other columnists, you desperately try to use the conflicting proposals from Cameron’s policy groups against him, but yet again this is a shallow argument.  Is it really surprising that a pro-competitiveness policy group suggests expanding airports and an environmental group suggests halting their expansion?  Of course not!  It’s perfectly logical.  The thing that annoys me is that I wanted these policy groups to report their findings in private rather than tell the public about them and cause complete confusion as to what they were trying to say (Zac Goldsmith being a prime example of poor message management), but having lots of different ideas on how to take the party forward is a good thing.

Some people like yourself want Cameron to keep modernising, whereas others want him to stick to the core conservative issues.  Here’s my radical suggestion - do both.  Talk about immigration, crime, taxes, the EU, the environment, the economy, society - talk about everything.  Cameron needs to set out his views clearly and concisely to the public on a massive range of issues if he is to convince them he should be Prime Minister.  Sorry Polly, but saying he should only stick to the centre ground is a foolhardy strategy and will cost him the next General Election, but maybe that’s why you suggested it?….

Yours truly,

A.Tory

Dear The Independent,

Dear oh dear.  Your leading article on the new exams watchdog, which is designed to end the debate over the ‘dumbing down’ of exams, was very poor.  I can only assume that you don’t really understand the mechanism of exam scripts being marked, because if you did the flaws in the proposal for a new watchdog would have been plainly apparent.

Having an independent body responsible for ‘reporting’ on exam standards, plus a separate body for the National Curriculum and ‘monitoring’ subject syllabuses sounds great but achieves little.  No-one has explained what powers these new bodies will have, which threatens to render them useless as their role appears to be ‘reporting’ and ‘monitoring’ the major exam boards.  It sounds as though the exam boards will retain control of setting their own questions, writing their own syllabuses and marking their own scripts - which means that any attempt to crack down on any one of those functions will simply allow them to give more slack in another area.  For example, if an exam board like AQA is told that they are making the syllabus easier, they can nod and smile politely and leave the syllabus unchanged, but make their marking more lenient.  How will this be stopped?  Any changes made by exam boards to questions and marking are very subtle and not easily identifiable from one year to the next, leaving this new regulator helpless.  The exam boards will take every opportunity to push their grades a little higher.

If you really want to deal with falling exam standards, scrap the exam boards in favour of a single non-profit independent organisation and let university professors and teaching unions write the exam questions and set the syllabuses.  That way, there is no political meddling or interference and the days of exam boards ‘dumbing down’ the syllabus or exam papers would be over.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear Gordon Brown,

The irony is palpable.  Having spent so many months accusing David Cameron of being light on substance and action, you are now guilty of precisely the same failure - this time over the problems in Burma.

There are many reasons why your stance is embarrassing.  The military regime in Burma has been in power for years, and I don’t remember you or Tony Blair trying to do anything about it.  Only now, when a demonstration begins, do you start to become involved by vigorously wagging your finger at the Burmese leaders.  I notice that it was only yesterday that the UN Security Council had a meeting about the situation, despite the protests starting at the end of last week, and I’m sure the Burmese authorities are quaking in their boots at having to deal with a UN Special Envoy.  “The whole world is watching Burma now and the age of impunity is over for anyone in that regime who commits crimes against individuals or the people of Burma.”  Yer, sure.  Like I said, lots of finger wagging but no substance.  I try to support the UN as much as possible, but if this is the best it can do we should all be ashamed.  My thoughts are with the innocent civilians who are picking up the tab for your inaction.  I wonder what your reaction to the crisis would have been if a radical Muslim dictatorship was in power in Burma?

Yours in despair,

A.Tory

Dear David Miliband,

Like Alan Johnson, you are clearly detached from the reality of what Labour’s foreign policy has done to this country and many others, hence the need for me to write this letter to you.

For you to stand there in front of the conference and the media and state that “every citizen of every nation deserves the freedom and equal rights of a true democracy” is galling.  If this were true, perhaps you and the Labour Party would desist from assaulting the freedom of the British people in terms of our civil liberties (surveillance, ID cards, largest DNA database in the world etc), or have you forgotten these events?  To further suggest that Britain is a “true democracy” is laughable, as the Labour government have done everything in their power to lessen their accountability to the public.  But perhaps your greatest mistake is to imply that everyone on the planet WANTS a democracy.  This imposition of Western values on non-Western nations has been one of the key elements of the hatred shown towards us by many Arab states.  They don’t want our values, they have values of their own which they wish to practise without fear of being invaded or blown up by Western armies.

We have no right to impose our values on them, in the same way that they have no right to impose their values on us.  I cannot believe you are so naive and out-of-touch that you think democracy around the world will solve everything.  In fact, if democracy were allowed to take it’s course Algeria and Egypt would have Islamic governments instead of their pro-Western dictators - but you wouldn’t want that to happen now, would you.

Yours in utter disbelief,

A.Tory

P.S. It would have been nice for you to have covered the Iraq war in your speech as well, or are Labour’s lies and deceit still a bit fresh in the mind?

Dear Alan Johnson,

How stupid do you think we are, seriously?  I was considering being constructive in this letter to you about the future of the NHS, but after your speech yesterday I have no choice but to be extremely blunt about my feelings on the issue.

The policies you outlined in your speech are the most insulting suggestions you could have come up with, as they all fall under the one of the following two categories:

1. ’Why the hell haven’t you done this already?’

Apparently you are now keen to move away from “top-down structural change”.  Well, congratulations.  Everyone in the NHS could have told you how damaging government targets and interventions are in providing health services, but Labour blindly crashed on with their plans regardless of how destructive they were.  Of course the NHS should be “clinically driven and locally led” - that goes for any health service in an industrialised country.  Honestly, just pathetic. 

2. ‘It’s Labour’s fault this happened in the first place!’

The reason GP surgeries will NOT open “at times and in locations that suit the patient, not the practice” is because your negotiations over GP contracts were so poor that they now work fewer hours for more pay than they did under the last Conservative government, so don’t you dare lecture the public about how you will improve GP services when Labour have created the problem in the first place.  For you to then say you didn’t want a confrontational approach with the GPs is unbelievable, seeing as you are still struggling to control their pay demands (which have swallowed most of the new investment in the NHS that Labour have been so “proud” of) and are completely at their mercy thanks to your poor management.  I’d love to see you try and force them to put more GP surgeries in deprived areas as well.   The fact that you want a regulator to oversee cleanliness in hospital wards is yet another example of top-down control!  If you squeeze NHS budgets, cleaning services are always going to be hit because hospitals will find the cheapest contractor available, which completely undermines any attempt by matrons and nurses to combat infection.

For you to suggest that the Conservatives are a “major risk” to the NHS when they want to remove the government from the running of services and scrap your stupid government targets shows how desperate you are to make an impact.  The sooner Labour are removed the sooner, the sooner the Conservatives can get on with saving it.

Yours in disgust.

A.Tory

Dear David Cameron,

I respect the fact that you are not bothering to fight Gordon Brown for the headlines during the Labour Party conference.  There isn’t really much point, seeing as he will steal the headlines regardless of any counter-offensive you launch.  But as you rightly spotted yesterday, Gordon Brown’s speech was light on content and was clearly designed to bring the State further into people’s lives - and this is where you have to bring him crashing down to earth.

To save you a little time, here is a list of points to attack Brown on, either because he forgot to mention them or because he failed to address them in sufficient detail:

EDUCATION - How will he halt the freefall in the credibility of our national examinations?  Why should it only be people on low incomes who get free university education?  How come ‘catch-up’ classes have so far failed to stop an increase in the number of NEETs?

FAMILY - Why talk about child poverty, seeing as poverty has increased under Labour?  How can you extend maternity leave and not paternity leave?  How can small businesses cope with such a change?

CRIME - How can he attack underage drinkers after 10 years of ignoring them?  Surely 24-hour licensing has made things worse?  Is more stop-and-search really going to help community relations and cut crime?  Has he forgotten that he has introduced most of the bureaucracy in the police force that he is now trying to cut?  Didn’t Labour claim to be tough on the causes of crime ten years ago?

EU - Why should we be “good Europeans”?  Where is our referendum?

NHS - Has he forgotten that he was Chancellor when all the hospital wards were being left dirty?  How we will double the number of matrons when we aren’t training enough hospital staff at the moment?

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, he’s talking about spending lots more money when he is cutting public sector pay this year, he completely ignored immigration controls and the EU referendum, he didn’t propose anything to help mend our ‘broken society’, a lot of his initiatives were re-releases of old policies - and last but by no means least, his references to ‘Britishness’ were sickening.  He doesn’t care about the appalling deal that England gets thanks to his funding arrangements, nor is he going to stop Scottish MPs voting in England as it increases his level of support relative to the Conservatives.

Mr Cameron, this speech was a gift to you.  He failed to produce anything to capture the public spirit and he failed to achieve any advances in policy over Blair.  If you can’t tear him to pieces over this speech, there really isn’t much chance for the Conservative Party at the next election - whenever it may be.

Yours in hope,

A.Tory

Dear Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

I, like many other people reading the papers this morning, will have mixed feelings about your trip to America.  With the best will in the world, your previous comments about the US government and their role in international politics makes it hard to believe your sentiments expressed yesterday, such as your denial that Iran wants a nuclear bomb.

Whether or not you appreciate the instability in the Middle East, you must understand that your war of words with America has led to a heightened level of tension in the eyes of many countries around the world.  Your failure to comply with the United Nations on many occasions has compounded the suspicion directed at your leadership.  I hope that your trip and accompanying speeches will demonstrate beyond doubt that you will work with the international community instead of becoming an obstacle to peace.  I’m sure that the media in the UK and USA have done their best to demonise you at every available opportunity, and with some degree of success, but there is still plenty of time for you to silence your critics.  Please don’t waste this chance of preventing a war in Iran - the West doesn’t want a war, and I hope you don’t either.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear Bruce Anderson,

I find it very hard to disagree with your analysis of Gordon Brown’s state of mind with regard to a possible autumn election.  As the title of your article suggests, he has every reason to call an election and yet he still might not take the plunge.

The polls are still behind Brown, albeit with slightly different assessments of the margin of victory he might hope for.  However, there is plenty of opportunity for the Labour boat to be rocked, with the EU referendum still on the agenda (which Cameron would stick to in the event of a General Election) and the tough times facing UK farmers remaining a possible source of further discontent.  The unions may yet give Brown a frosty reception at the conference, and yesterday’s speeches by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were by no means dazzling.  David Cameron and the Conservatives are going to put their policies together for the Conservative Party conference and if they are astute in picking the best policies from their six working parties they could put together a strong case to the voters, whereas Gordon Brown has little new to offer.

Calling an election before the Conservative Party conference may sound great, but it gives the opposition the first chance to draw blood in what will be an ugly and short-lived battle.  I’m not sure Brown is convinced, and the final sentence of your article sums it up quite brilliantly:

Yet the words on [Gordon Brown's] political memorial may still read: “Here lies the man who underestimated David Cameron.”

Yours with respect,

A.Tory

Dear Minette Marrin,

Thank you so much for being honest about immigration in the Sunday Times.  Despite the ability of the word ‘immigration’ to polarise public opinion, you have highlighted the undeniable fact of the strain placed on our public services by having an open-door policy towards immigration for years, if not decades.

It frustrates me enormously that David Cameron does not take this angle in the immigration debate because I firmly believe that the British voters will flock behind him should he unambiguously state his belief that we need a skills-based immigration policy for English-speaking migrants which does not allow people immediate access to our public services.  Obviously most migrant workers pay their taxes and are law-abiding citizens, but this does not mean that they should be allowed to take advantage of our school system (which, as you said, is buckling under the pressure of having to cope with children who don’t even speak English) and our health service, which is plainly open to abuse.  The Conservatives are genuinely struggling in the polls at the moment thanks to their failure to appease core voters and attract the swing voters, but a policy that focuses on addressing the issues you raised in your article will turn the polls against Labour - although should an autumn election be called, there may not be enough time for this to have an effect.

Yours in admiration,

A.Tory

Dear Matthew d’Ancona,

Your insightful article in the Sunday Telegraph provided an interesting perspective on how Gordon Brown will approach the Labour conference.  In amongst the will-he-won’t-he election talk, a lot of commentators seem to have forgotten that the conference may need to focus on other issues if it is to be successful.

The main point that I disagree with you on is how much work Brown has to do at his conference.  The threat of a battle with the unions appears to have somewhat receded over the past couple of weeks, as I suspect the unions will support him wholeheartedly in a 2007 General Election campaign despite their recent mutterings about pay rises.  The polls are suggesting that Gordon Brown is already chipping away at the Tory votes without having released anything like an election manifesto, which to me indicates that he is in a strong position and just has to ensure that he doesn’t make any blunders at his conference to continue this momentum.  It has seemingly escaped the media’s attention that Brown has released very few policies of note, even in a period where the Lib Dems and Conservatives have been vociferously battling over green issues - so my guess is that his conference will be full of vacuous and gentle soundbytes as opposed to bold and controversial statements of principle.  I’m not convinced that the public are that bothered about what policies Brown has, given the lack of alternatives at the ballot box in their eyes.  Either way, this conference will be remembered as the will-he-won’t-he conference in the political history books, regardless of the decision he eventually makes.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear QCA,

Yet again you have failed to give the public good reason to believe that our national examination system is alive and well.  I’m sure most people outside of education probably didn’t realise that many exam papers are now marked on a computer screen instead of having the exam script on a desk in front of the marker.  The National Association of Headteachers (NAH) thinks the online marking system is starting to break down and I agree with them.

The problem that every government for the last 15 or so years has failed to address is the operations of privatised exam boards.  These exam boards, such as AQA, OCR and EDEXCEL compete with each other to attract schools to take their exams in order to receive an income from examination fees.  The problem is that in a competitive market, they have a clear incentive to reduce their overheads to increase their profit margins, as any organisation in the same position would do.   The fact that exam papers are marked online is heralded by some as a great step forward in education, but as the NAH rightly pointed out: “[The examiners] are not able to annotate the scripts by hand, there’s a time constraint and you can’t take into account youngsters who do quite a lot of writing and don’t fill in the standard box that online marking demands.  So legitimately there’s a question whether or not online marking is missing some of the achievements of youngsters.”  As an examiner how can you leave comments and clearly indicate the distribution of marks with supporting evidence when you are staring at a script on a computer screen which may not fit neatly into the examination marking criteria?  The drive to increase profit also goes a long way to explaining why exam boards often get office staff to mark scripts instead of qualified teachers (EDEXCEL in particular have been caught doing this several times).

With profit the overriding concern in examination syllabuses and the marking of scripts, the quality of exam questions and exam marking is always going to suffer.  It’s about time we dumped this ludicrous notion of exam boards competing with each other and handed control over to a single non-profit non-governmental organisation that has rigorous exam questions and exam marking as their first priority.

Yours in annoyance,

A.Tory

Dear Mervyn King,

Congratulations on standing up for yourself in the Treasury Committee witch hunt yesterday.  Quite alarmingly, most politicians with an interest in financial matters have been looking for someone to blame at the BoE and it looks like you are the poor soul who has borne the brunt of it - which in my opinion is horribly misguided.

 Today’s article on your committtee appearance in the Independent stated that there were two main concerns expressed by MPs - the “lack of action to stop Northern Rock taking on too much risk, and the Bank’s failure to help it before emergency funding was required”.  What I don’t understand is why the BoE should intervene with any of this.  My previous post on the topic made it perfectly clear that neither of these two ‘concerns’ required any action whatsoever on your part.  If Northern Rock, as an independent business in a tough financial market, chooses to take on too much risk, why should you get involved?  Taking on risk is a key feature of any market in a mixed economy such as ours and if a risky decision causes a bank to come crashing down and their savers to lose money, so be it.  To suggest that the BoE or anyone else should be forced to offer emergency funding is ridiculous, as no emergency funding was required.  Once Northern Rock’s share price hit rock bottom they would have been bought out by a rival and their share price would have immediately started to rise again.  A government guaranteeing deposits flies in the face of the risks taken in financial markets and it is certainly not a matter on which you should be judged.  In short, the BoE and the government should have steered clear of this whole situation and there was never any justification for them getting involved.

With sympathy,

A.Tory

Dear Jacqui Smith,

With the power of the media these days, there are countless examples every year of people being suspected of wrongdoing before they’ve even been charged with any offence.  Celebrities often fall victim to such attacks, and even Madeleine McCann’s parents have been judged to some extent before any evidence has been brought before them in a court law.  But sometimes, you just can’t help feeling suspicious about certain actions, and today the finger is pointly squarely at you for blocking a US criminal investigation into the alleged corruption in arms deals with Saudi Arabia.  When this story originally came to light under Tony Blair, many people were disgusted by the then PM’s decision to halt an investigation into corruption and secret payments on the grounds of potential damage to “the national interest” and annoying the Saudi regime, who apparently threatened to pull out of the deal unless the investigation was stopped.  It now appears that you have picked up the batton and are running with it as the Home Office is still refusing to complete the necessary paper work in order for the US to start collecting evidence.

I try very hard not to judge people in politics as a general rule, knowing that most of them are decent and moral individuals.  However, I find it very hard to believe that everything in these Saudi arms deals was above board when the Labour government is clearly intent on preventing the Serious Fraud Office files coming to light.  Under such circumstances I am quite happy to openly admit that I will presume guilt unless you are proven innocent, so feel free to release all the files to the Americans and prove me wrong.

Yours in anticipation,

A.Tory

Dear Jose Mourinho,

I was quite surprised to hear of your resignation as manager of Chelsea this morning, but the more I think about it the less surprising it seems.  Your relationship with Roman Abramovich has obviously been in a poor state for many months and this season hasn’t got off to a flyer (although you’re only a few points off the top of the Premiership).  Even so, you have brought unprecedented success to a club which until you arrived had spent considerable sums of money without making sufficient progress.  Your style of football has been a breath of fresh air to the Premiership and although I’m not a big fan of Chelsea as a club, your tactics and strategies have set new standards in this country and for that I’m very grateful.

Best wishes,

A.Tory

Dear Gordon Brown,

This letter is not intended to criticise you per se, as I detest Robert Mugabe as much as the next person, but the financial and social difficulties facing Zimbabwe are complicated from the perspective of international relations and your ‘tough guy’ act might not be the best ploy.

What the British media often forgets is that despite many EU member states being quite happy to shun Mugabe at every available opportunity, he is well supported by several African nations including South Africa.  For example, the forceful removal of land from white farmers in Zimbabwe was viewed with horror and disdain in the UK whereas people in relatively deprived African nations - who still feel the effects of historical white dominance - were not too bothered about the whole thing.  As has been suggested in the papers today, should Robert Mugabe be excluded from the summit in Portugal it is more than likely that other African leaders will pull out immediately, which would surely dilute the credibility of the talks.  I’m not saying that giving Mugabe the cold shoulder is necessarily the wrong thing to do, but trying to muscle him out of international discussions could potentially have undesirable consequences and may weaken support within Africa for removing him from power.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear Simon Heffer,

Well done on a superb summary of the Northern Rock crisis in today’s Telegraph.  You have succinctly captured the idiocy of the entire situation from the government’s perspective and made it very clear how incredibly dangerous the don’t-worry-Gordon-will-bail-you-out precedent is.

For all this panic and fear spread around by the media, you quite rightly pointed out that nothing particularly serious was ever likely to happen.  If Northern Rock’s share price kept falling as people kept withdrawing their money, so what?  Their share price would have got so low that they would have been a perfect buy-out opportunity for another bank who could have taken over all their assets for a fraction of their market value, and made a huge profit in the long run.  Gordon Brown and his “pupper Chancellor” have written a frighteningly large blank cheque to Northern Rock and as you said, this equates to telling every bank operating in the UK that you can screw up and take the most ridiculous risks and the taxpayer will still bail you out.

Northern Rock was never a crisis - it was capitalism in action.  Sometimes businesses take risks which don’t work out.  Northern Rock’s financial basis was whipped away from under their feet and they suffered accordingly, but that was a risk they were willing to take.  Who cares if the shareholders lost money?  Who cares if the customers stood to lose money?  Every year businesses die all around the country because they made a bad call - it’s called capitalism!  Gordon Brown is still a socialist at heart and can’t bear to see his potential voters getting stressed over their savings, so when the poll ratings are a little bit shaky, up steps the puppet Chancellor on his behalf to save the day.

It makes me physically sick, it really does.  The fact that the Conservatives agree with the puppet Chancellor’s intervention and are going to jump on Gordon Brown’s spending bandwagon just makes the whole thing that little bit worse.

Yours in admiration (for Simon Heffer, not Gordon Brown…)

A.Tory

Dear Liam Byrne,

Your shallow words on immigration fail to offer any comfort to the people that are affected the most.  It is plainly obvious to anyone that listens to the news or reads a newspaper that having uncontrolled immigration from other EU countries is having a seriously detrimental impact on the UK.

BBC News has the story of police in Cambridgeshire struggling to cope with the number of offences being committed by foreigners, including cannabis production and human trafficking.  According to the The Daily Mail today, police officials are aware that criminal gangs from countries such as Romania are now operating freely in the UK as they only need to flash their passport to gain entry, and they send the proceeds of their crimes back to Romania.  A leaked Home Office memo recently predicted that 45,000 criminals will have entered the UK following the recent expansion of the EU.  And all this comes after the Conservatives identified widespread benefit fraud and highlighted the fact that the government has no idea how many rapists, child molesters and murderers from foreign countries are now living in the UK. 

Labour have failed this country.  How anyone can say that this situation is acceptable is beyond me.  Criminals enter the country, gain access to our public services and benefits system, and not unsurprisingly they commit crimes.  Your pathetic promises of introducing a ‘points’ system is not going to control who comes into the UK in terms of criminals because you have no idea who the criminals are.  It disgusts me that we have such weak controls over our own borders and I am praying that David Cameron has the guts to stand up for this country and end this farce.  In the light of these increasingly frequent news stories, I am horrified that anyone can say that our society has benefited from EU expansion.

Yours in utter contempt,

A.Tory

Dear Hilary Clinton,

I must admit that I didn’t realise you were such a fan of Michael Moore films.  His recent film ‘Sicko’, which I’m looking forward to seeing on its UK release, clearly made an impact on you.  Healthcare is one of the most contentious issues in American politics and in the same way that Fahrenheit 9/11 made things difficult for the Republicans over the Iraq war, Sicko promises to do the same on healthcare - which may help to explain your incredibly generous $110 billion healthcare package announced today as part of your presidential campaign.

I assume you will make some savings elsewhere to pay for this scheme, seeing as the national debt runs into the trillions of dollars and the US has a massive trade deficit that isn’t helping matters.  I am also curious about how you intend to sell this to the American public, because your vision of universal healthcare for those without health insurance is a financial black hole that could suck the life out of your future government.  Healthcare in the USA is polarised, with those in possession of good private medical insurance getting world-class healthcare and those without insurance getting sub-standard government care, if any.  Should you wish to build a sustainable and effective healthcare system to support the needy, perhaps you should be looking to European healthcare models such as France and Germany instead of pouring money into supporting the weak whilst ignoring the fundamental problems inherent in private medical insurance - a system which is seldom found in any other Western nation.  Futhermore, you surely realise that it is often the people who have low paid jobs who suffer more than the unemployed in America, as most healthcare is provided by employers but those in low paid jobs are often ignored because of the expense to their boss.

Hilary, I know you’re desperate for votes and I understand that this is a core issue for voters, but is this policy too good to be true and what economic damage might you be causing to a future democratic administration by making such promises before you have even been elected?

Yours truly,

A.Tory

Dear Nuffield Council on Bioethics,

I am not likely to solve one of the great debates of our generation in the course of this letter, but you have certainly touched a nerve with your report that suggests the DNA of innocent people should no longer be stored by the police.  At present the police can keep the DNA of anyone who has been arrested, even if they are later released without charge, and you would like to see an end to this practice - and so would I, up to a point.

I have no doubts that having a large DNA database will help solve a number of crimes in the future, but the age-old arguments of ‘right to privacy’ and ‘human rights’ remain as strong as ever.  Your group has in the past been asked to look at whether it would help to have a national DNA database for the entire population, although you are currently of the view that this is not necessary.  Such a database would of course prove to be an incredible tool in fighting crime, but the human rights movement would go nuts.  My position on the matter probably makes things even more complicated.

I don’t like the idea of someone having my DNA on file even if I haven’t done anything wrong.  However, it wouldn’t exactly worry me, seeing as I’m a law-abiding citizen and don’t really have anything to hide.  The conflict in my head arises because I very strongly believe that this country needs to introduce some form of identification card to prevent people from gaining access to our public services who are not entitled to them.  Our health service and education system are at breaking point because of the strain placed on them by immigration levels over the past 10 years or so, but it is the illegal immigration which concerns me the most.  Countries such as France and Germany have a identification card which is not used for anything other than confirming eligibility for access to schools, hospitals etc., and the UK desperately needs something similar (the police are not allowed to ask for this card as a means of identifying you).  Such a card is not used to fight crime or terrorism, but does have your basic personal information, and would require a fingerprint as well to be fully effective in my opinion.

I guess what I’m saying is that a national DNA database does not appear necessary in fighting crime and has some serious human rights problems, but I would still like to see some form of identity card introduced for public services to prevent abuse of the system from people living in the UK and abroad.

Best wishes with your report,

A.Tory

Dear Ruth Lea,

Yet again I find myself agreeing with your views on British politics.  Not only do I think that Global Vision, a think-tank set up by you to help us redefine our relationship with the EU, was an excellent addition to the debate, but you have a keen eye for political commentary as emphasised yet again by your piece in the Telegraph.

You are absolutely right to trace back the current financial problems in the UK to the ERM chaos in the early 1990s, as this is where a lot of the groundwork for Gordon Brown’s supposedly good performance as Chancellor was originally laid.  My question to you is how do the Conservatives break this commonly held perception of Brown’s competence during his 10 years in control of the purse strings?  Whilst your assertion that Brown deserves the blame is certainly true, how do the Conservatives break down the psychological barriers in the minds of the voters that were created by the ERM disaster all those many years ago?  Do you think we can convince voters that Ken Clarke was largely responsible for the sustained economic growth in this country, or would it be more practical to focus on the present day and attack Brown on the current political battlefield?

Yours with respect,

A.Tory

Dear Israeli government,

Needless to say the continuing support you receive from the USA remains a factor in the continuing violence in the Middle East and you seem to enjoy a certain amount of immunity to blame as a result.  This could not have been better demonstrated in the dearth of media coverage for the claims that on September 6th you secretly bombed Syria on the basis of your intelligence reports.  I’m not one for letting every country get hold of potentially dangerous weapons, but your complete disregard for international cooperation or approval on such matters flies in the face of efforts to improve the economic and political stability in the Middle East.

If you had evidence that Syria was attempting to acquire nuclear material, I have no doubt that the international community would have joined your efforts to prevent this from coming to fruition - but yet again, your lack of respect for diplomacy and peaceful intervention leaves tensions in the Middle East at breaking point.  Congratulations.

Yours in anger,

A.Tory

Dear Nick Clegg,

Reading the Guardian’s assessment of your leadership credentials this morning was a surreal experience.  With the Lib Dem conference just around the corner the spotlight will be shining brightly on Ming Campbell as he defends his record as Lib Dem leader and presumably sets out his case for being given more time.  I’m not entirely sure on what grounds you believe that Ming Campbell has put “liberal thinking at the radical centre of British political debate” because quite frankly I think he has achieved precisely the opposite - no-one in the media is talking about the Lib Dems and to describe Ming Campbell as ‘radical’ is truly terrifying.

But what struck me most about your article was the fact that it reminded me of David Miliband’s article in a major broadsheet that was published when many people were calling for him to stand against Gordon Brown as Labour leader.  In that article he defended Gordon Brown (which is exactly what you have done for Ming), set out the priorities for the party over the coming months and years (which is exactly what you have done for the Lib Dems) and gave the impression that he was testing the reaction of the media and the party to his views (which is exactly how it felt reading your statement).  Admittedly David Miliband decided to bide his time, as you are doing, in the belief that his chance will come when Gordon Brown eventually comes crashing down.  Miliband will most certainly be back on the agenda when Labour need to choose a new leader in the future and I wonder how long it will be before you finally put your name forward as the future Lib Dem leader?  Ming Campbell is not going to walk away anytime soon, so I’m curious to see how you will play this one.

Yours in anticipation,

A.Tory

Dear Mike Baker,

Thank you for your article on the BBC News website about pupils rating their teachers.  I am very interested in education and was educated in schools and universities from the age of 4 to 24, so like most people I’ve seen many teachers and sat in many lessons ranging from sheer brilliance to absolutely dire.

It was fascinating to read your accounts of trying to judge the quality of teachers, seeing as you will be helping to judge the national teaching awards being held soon.  Your mention of the www.ratemyteachers.com website, which had proved very controversial in the teaching profession, reminded me of how differently people perceive teaching as a career.  The unions have always and probably will always resist any attempt to put extra pressure on teachers.  I would agree that teachers do have to put up with a hell of a lot in terms of bureaucracy, stress, etc but at the same time I’ve always felt strongly about the lack of controls over the quality of teaching in our schools.

To cut a long story short, you basically can’t fire a teacher for being rubbish or incompetent.  You can only get rid of a teacher if they engage in gross misconduct or something along those lines, which is usually difficult to prove.  It horrifies me that once a teacher has been given a job at a school, they have that job for life regardless of whether they are any good at it.  I’m sure everyone at some point experienced some diabolical teaching, but to think that a teacher could get away with it can’t be right.  Getting students to rate teachers may sound ridiculous, but it can offer an insight into a classroom that a formal observation (where a senior teacher sits at the back of the class and watches a lesson, in full view of all the other students) never will.  We often forget how many teachers the pupils meet in just a few years at secondary school - and I would be willing to bet a lot of money that they can easily tell the difference between the good ones and the bad ones.

Teaching as a profession needs reform for all kinds of reasons, and schools being unable to get rid of sub-standard teachers is certainly something that needs to be looked at.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory