Letters: Harnessing David Cameron’s political experience is a shrewd move by a PM with few alternatives

SIR – Rishi Sunak has recognised the dearth of suitably seasoned candidates for Cabinet roles. Appointing David Cameron Foreign Secretary and harnessing his experience and maturity – things sadly missing in recent Tory administrations – is a shrewd move.

Cameron Morice
Reading, Berkshire

SIR – It’s time for the grown-ups.

Keith Hutchence
Moreton, Oxfordshire

SIR – So David Cameron, who threw in the towel the moment he lost the Brexit referendum, is now the new Foreign Secretary. How tone deaf can this woeful Government be?

Judith Goulden
London NW3

SIR – We now have a Foreign Secretary who is not an elected MP, given the job by an unelected Prime Minister who arrived in his post by succeeding a failed, unelected predecessor whom he failed to defeat in a leadership race.

To add insult to injury, the latest Foreign Secretary is none other than the PM who led the country into 13 years of austerity, nearly broke the Union with an independence referendum and then repeated the exercise with another referendum that ended in Brexit. 

Would someone please explain where the British voting public come in?

Tom Moore
Newcastle upon Tyne

SIR – For two years I have told anyone willing to listen that the Government needs David Cameron back in a front-line role. I therefore cried tears of joy at the news that he has agreed to serve in this senior position.

As Foreign Secretary and an experienced and successful former prime minister – who was consistently more popular than the party he led – he will be able to speak with authority on behalf of the Government and hugely improve its poor media communications. 

This Cabinet reshuffle is a political risk worth taking and one that may come to be seen as a turning point in the Conservatives’ political fortunes.

Philip Duly
Haslemere, Surrey

SIR – The appointment of David Cameron as Foreign Secretary reminds me of the scene in Back to the Future when Marty McFly first seeks out Professor Emmett Brown in 1955 and tells him he is from 1985. Sceptically, Brown demands: “Tell me, future boy, who is President of the United States in 1985?” On being informed that it is Ronald Reagan, he repeats the name with open ridicule and asks: “Then who’s vice-president, Jerry Lewis?”

I wish I had a flux capacitor.

Clive Godber
Hull, East Yorkshire

SIR – Now that Suella Braverman has been sacked, could she and Nigel Farage form a partnership? A centre-Right party to challenge the old system might be what the country needs. 

Veronica Timperley
London W1

SIR – First Dominic Raab, now Suella Braverman. Two of the few sensible ministers who have a feel for how the majority are reacting to current events in this shambolic country.

I have voted Conservative all my life but Rishi Sunak is in danger of losing yet another supporter.

Alan Skennerton
Bracknell, Berkshire

SIR – The grey blob strikes again. 

Harry Gorst
Torquay, Devon

SIR – Now we have confirmation that Labour decides who will be ministers in Rishi Sunak’s Government. 

Mike Edwards 
Alveston, Gloucestershire

Lest we forget

SIR – Tom McKenzie (Letters, November 12) was stunned by the paucity of poppy sellers in London. 

When I first started selling poppies in 1986, I was joined on the streets by veterans of the Second World War and Korea. Twenty years later, I was joined by their widows, and some streets had to be missed out. Today, all are gone or simply too frail to stand in frost and rain for an hour, and nobody is taking their place. 

Quite simply, with most of us entirely untouched by war or interested only in the socio-political cause du jour, we are – despite our noble words – forgetting the men of Flanders Fields, Sword Beach, Kohima, Imjin, Enniskillen, Fitzroy, and Kajaki; they are faceless people from other times, whom – let’s be frank – we want to forget about. As Kipling would remind us, we have been here before: we forget until we discover, usually too late, that we need our soldiers again.

This is why, for all the bluster, the political parties should unite in protecting Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday as national events of fundamental importance. Sometimes we need to be reminded to remember, and to contemplate the fact that those who shout the loudest do not speak for us or our silent dead. 

As for taking action, the best thing Mr McKenzie could do next year is pick up a tin and a tray and join us – and bring along some friends.

Victor Launert
Matlock Bath, Derbyshire

SIR – In my area of the country, the poppy sellers were offering several types. 

There was the larger vehicle poppy, the traditional paper and pin version, and a very practical plastic one that could be clipped to a zip (like a dog lead). 

Furthermore, the seller had a card-reader machine so there was the option to pay in cash or donate £2, £3 or £5 by card. The British Legion is moving with the times.

Paulette Peterson
Cambridge

Heat pump noise

SIR – The noise made by heat pumps (report, November 13) cannot be ignored because it is constant and all-pervasive. Unlike conventional boilers, a heat pump relies on a fast-turning fan to operate effectively. While the rules may require the noise to be limited in laboratory tests, such tests – like those for cars – are notorious for providing optimum data in laboratory conditions, but turn out to be inaccurate in the real world. 

Air-source heat pumps must be outside, are exposed to weather and age quickly. The fan runs smoothly until its bearings get contaminated. Time and lack of maintenance will mean that heat pumps will only get noisier as they age. We should not be subsidising prototype technology that we know will cause problems in the future. Far better to wait for the technology to mature so that the harmful effects are avoided.

Dr Michael A Fopp
Soulbury, Buckinghamshire

SIR – The report by leading acousticians that says heat pumps are too noisy for millions of British homes should act as a wake-up call to the Government and climate activists (report, November 13). 

There is a real danger that, if the Government listens to the siren voices in the climate movement and insists on the installation of heat pumps, millions of people will be forced to live with unacceptable levels of noise. 

The worst hit will be those living in flats, houses of multiple occupation and terraced homes. Instead of setting a target for the installation of heat pumps, the Government should introduce a moratorium on them until the noise issues are resolved.

John Stewart
Chairman, UK Noise Association
London SW9

Cystic fibrosis drugs

SIR – I have witnessed the positive effect of Kaftrio – a “miracle” cystic fibrosis drug (Letters, November 13). Thankfully, those currently in receipt of it will, it seems, be able to continue.

My heart goes out to children and their parents who may be denied access, knowing that these drugs exist but that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has recommended that they are too expensive for the NHS to provide. We spend billions on vanity projects; by comparison, the cost of these drugs pales into insignificance. 

We must give a voice to children afflicted by this disease.

Sheona Fraser
Rattlesden, Suffolk

Self-service setbacks

SIR – Like Oliver Stewart (Letters, November 13), I prefer to use self-service checkouts to avoid the queues.

However, I wish the bagging process could be improved to avoid having to call for assistance. How often are we faced with the voice telling us we’ve not put an item in the bagging area, or, more frustratingly, where we should place our bags before filling them?

Chris Yates
Peasedown Saint John, Somerset

Jumpers in Cornwall’s close-knit communities

SIR – You report (November 11)  that hand-knitted fishermen’s jumpers are at risk of dying out because of a lack of experienced knitters in Yorkshire. 

This may also be true of Cornwall, where traditional guernseys and knit-frocks have been knitted by hand since the 17th century. There, knitting became a necessary occupation for women, and in many fishing villages local families used distinctive traditional patterns for their menfolk. 

These would also aid identification of the wearer, especially if lost at sea.

Jeremy Rowett Johns
Clifton upon Teme, Worcestershire

Lighting up the court with a smouldering pipe

SIR – As a junior barrister – and pipe smoker (Letters, November 13) – in the early 1980s, I recall being summoned back into court at Chelmsford after a short break during a trial.

I stuffed my pipe back into my pocket and returned to court – only to hear the judge say, “Mr Pini, you appear to be spontaneously combusting” as the lining of my pocket went up. Of course the aroma hit me first, but then, to my horror, I saw that the court was suffused with dense clouds of Mellow Virginia. 

I did stop some years later.

His Honour John Pini KC
Stamford, Lincolnshire

SIR – In the early 1950s my father was the engineer officer in HMS Pincher, an Algerine-class minesweeper. 

One day he was walking across Chatham Dockyard when a naval rating came up to him, saluted and said: “Excuse me sir, you are on fire”. 

I remember my mother spending ages mending the pocket of his greatcoat that had been damaged by his pipe.

Howard Wallace-Sims
Sandwich, Kent

SIR – My father smoked Old Holborn in his pipe, fondly referring to it as “camel dung and old bus tickets”.

Anne Croucher
Tunbridge Wells, Kent

SIR  – My father had an elderly aunt who decided to take up smoking cigarettes at the age of 90. 

Her son, with whom she lived, was appalled, and asked my father, a GP, to advise her against it. My father found her to be extremely fit, and thought that moderate smoking would not reduce her life expectancy. The son was furious and would not let his mother smoke in his house. She died just before her 100th birthday, having spent much of her last decade smoking behind a shed in the garden.

Quentin Skinner
Warminster, Wiltshire

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