Spithead Lab News Today

SIR – Thames Water (Comment, April 1) has been rebuked by Michael Gove, the Levelling Up Secretary, for asking to increase water bills by 40 per cent. Yet it has already increased my water bill by 75 per cent since February, regardless of the fact that the countryside is now saturated (there is never any real shortage of water in this area) and even though there has been no reduction in the discharge of sewage into rivers. It needs to be allowed to go bust. C M Chadwick Lechlade, Gloucest...

SIR – No amount of political posturing can disguise the fact that our Armed Forces have a major recruitment crisis (report, January 28). There is nothing novel about the recruitment problem, or special to this country: it is why so many nations in both the past and present have resorted to conscription. The preferred British way to resolve the issue, however, has been the centuries-old tradition of a trained citizenry. Today organisations like the National Rifle Association, and events li...

SIR – Allister Heath (“Post Office scandal has exposed the elite’s contempt for Middle England”, Comment, January 11) nails what the majority think about the overpaid, unaccountable “corporate-bureaucratic class”. You see its actions everywhere. The same is true of the current political class. Look at Sir Keir Starmer. He was director of public prosecutions while sub-postmasters were being taken to court. It seems incredible that he did not know about th...

SIR – Fraser Nelson writes that “Britain is paying the deadly price for telling the public to ‘protect the NHS’” (Comment, December 15).

Plus: Lessons of Dunkirk; stuck on benefits; probate and housing; the enemy of wool; and shopping for tall people

Plus: a solution to strikes; Ireland's defence strategy; self-driving cars; and the best place to listen to The Lark Ascending

Plus: unfair Ulez charges; contaminated British honey; why the Armed Forces should continue to support America; and local news for dogs

SIR – You report (January 15) on the scandal of poor accommodation standards for our Armed Forces personnel.

SIR – In his New Year speech (report, January 6), Sir Keir Starmer said that the Conservatives “believe a good government is one that gets out of the way”.

SIR – With the retreat of Russian forces on a number of fronts in Ukraine, and the diplomatic humiliation that the country will experience at the G20 summit, we are probably witnessing the end of Vladimir Putin.