Delaying justice

Sir: Charles Moore argued (Notes, 13 January) that sub-postmasters in the Post Office/Horizon scandal should not be pardoned ‘en masse’, but rather that each case should be treated individually. He gives two reasons: the possible future risks associated with precedent and because each claim, being different, merits separate consideration. Theoretically, he may well be correct, but this would inevitably add many more wasted years to the endlessly protracted legal process. It would serve only to delay further the justice and the compensation to which the victims are entitled. The only real beneficiaries would, of course, be the lawyers.

Richard Longfield

Weston Patrick, Hampshire

Ancient precedent

Sir: Charles Moore says we should resist the urge to exonerate sub-postmasters without their appeals being heard as this would be a dangerous precedent, but there is a very ancient precedent: a royal pardon, now only given on the advice of HMG. Surely no more deserving cases could be found and it could be done very quickly. All that is needed is the political will to do so.

Richard Mugford

Gissing, Norfolk

Doctors’ pay

Sir: Your leading article (‘Sick list’,6 January) was most condescending and unfairly critical of junior doctors asking for higher pay. Take your figure of £52,900 p.a. including shift and overtime and examine further. Mortgage/income ratio is now 4.3, so on earnings of £52,900 an obtainable mortgage would be £227,470. After spending five years at medical school and then five years working, a typical 38-year-old junior doctor in Greater London would not be able to buy any reasonable house or flat in the area. It is insulting to be treated in such a way and your attempt to justify this is morally wrong.

Kit Carson

London SW4

A-wassailing

Sir: Matthew Dennison asks if the time has come to revive the Wassail (Notes on…, 6 January). I have been putting on a wassail for 13 years in our Bramley orchards in Nottinghamshire. I like to do it in late January and it is indeed something joyful to look forward to in the dog days of January. There’s a bonfire, hot spiced apple juice for children and extra strong cider brandy punch for those not doing Dry January. There’s plenty of jolly noise-making kit: jingle bells, whistles, swanees and kazzoos, football rattles, pan lids, torches and songsheets. Up and down the rows we stomp, banging, shouting, wailing, hollering, barking and laughing. I’m sure the magic works as we have bumper harvests every time we wassailled and don’t when we didn’t.

Suzannah Starkey

Southwell, Notts

Drinking days

Sir: Here is my advice to Toby Young (No sacred cows, 6 January) on limiting alcohol intake. I follow two simple rules: 1. Always have at least three dry days each week (I asterisk each drinking day in my pocket diary). 2. Only drink at home if you have guests – alcohol is to be enjoyed with others in pubs, restaurants and at social occasions. Rule 2 is particularly important, for our own sake, and also for the flourishing of British society.

Charles Clark

Chislehurst, Kent

The Cinderella Service

Sir: In his review of Victory to Defeat by Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman (Books, 13 January), Allan Mallinson omits the crucial lesson learnt by the British public and its political leaders from the first world war: never again must the army be involved in mass slaughter in the trenches of the Western Front. There was no movement to change this deep viewpoint, and even when rearmament began in the mid-1930s the army remained ‘the Cinderella Service’. Successive governments gave priority in rearming to home defence and did not even commit the five Regular Divisions to be sent to France in the event of war until February 1939. Hore-Belisha had to threaten to resign in April that year to obtain even a limited form of compulsory service: and that was to assist in anti-aircraft defences at home. The divisions sent to France on the outbreak of the second world war were badly trained and equipped.

The political and strategic assumptions, which were never challenged before the disaster in May 1940, were that France’s large army and the Maginot Line would hold up a German attack until Britain and the dominions could recruit and equip sufficient forces for an eventual counter-offensive. No one expected the French government to capitulate so quickly.

The British Army was not the vibrant organisation capable of learning the lessons of the 1918 victory which the authors’ title suggests. It would have required some of the political commitment and incentive which the Wehrmacht had in abundance in a militarised society and with a leadership bent on aggressive war.

Brian Bond

Emeritus Professor of Military History, King’s College London

Test of nostalgia

Sir: Reading Roger Alton aroused nostalgia for the sublime subtleties of traditional Test match cricket (Sport, 13 January). He warns of a truncated forthcoming England/India Test series in our brave new world of instant 20 overs cricket. It’s a sort of Americanisation of the national summer game. In the free market, one can hardly cavil at cricketers in search of top dollars (millions, for the fortunate winners of IPL contracts), yet who will remember the details of this instant form? I retain vivid memories of the first Test match I saw, England vs India in 1952, when Freddie Truman, in his Test debut wreaked havoc among a strong Indian batting line-up.

John Kidd

Surfers Paradise, Australia

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