Too many not too few

Sir: I have to disagree with your article ‘The people problem’ (3 February). There is a ‘people problem’ in the world but it is – globally – not too few, but too many people. In my own lifetime the world’s population has approximately tripled. This rate of increase is manifestly unsustainable. It has only been sustained to date because of the globalised and technologically sophisticated world order we have developed, an order which cannot necessarily be counted on. Yes, population levels are in gradual decline in some relatively affluent countries. So what? Perhaps there may be too few young people, but your piece ignores one important piece of the jigsaw: technological change.

The view that economic output is fundamentally affected by the presence or absence of labour (an argument curiously resonant of Marx’s labour theory of value) leaves technology out of account. Advances in artificial intelligence and technology generally will mean human labour, whether by hand or brain, will count for less and less in the future. The problem may in fact be finding meaningful work for many people to do at all. A declining population is likely to help meet this challenge, even if it won’t nullify it. An expanding population will do the opposite. What we need is a steady-state population, neither rising nor falling significantly year by year. However it must be based on a sustainable base population, which we simply don’t have at the moment.

Michael Towsey

London

Gulf between

Sir: Anna Somers Cocks’s account of her time in the United Arab Emirates with the Art Newspaper (‘Arabian nightmare’, 3 February) reminds me of my brief sojourn in 1996 as the first editor of the Sharjah-based daily the Gulf Today. Asked to produce an international publication, we were proud of our groundbreaking reporting on social issues, such as inbreeding and labour abuses. We were encouraged by our Arabic sister paper, which hoped it would be able to follow in our footsteps, given the greater leeway accorded to an English-language publication.

There were many obstacles. Fashion photos had to be censored or altered and listings of alcohol-related events at hotels in Dubai had to be carefully worded. Other established Arabic-language papers became resentful, suggesting we were writing illegally or immorally.

It didn’t last. The labour reporting particularly rankled the authorities. I had many long drives to Abu Dhabi, summoned to an information minister reclining on an ornate sofa. Most of the expat employees left within months. The Gulf Today is barely readable now. However, I like to think we helped push boundaries. Later publications, such as Time Out, did much to normalise cultural and social lives, but the UAE still censors with a heavy hand.

George W. Russell

Hong Kong

Right to die?

Sir: As a ‘reactionary’ who is opposed to assisted dying, I believe Matthew Parris’s article highlights precisely the chilling effects of legalising euthanasia (‘Assisted dying is inevitable’, 3 February). He writes that ‘to act upon these feelings will eventually be normalised in popular morality’. Quite so. It would mark a terrible shift from being a society that believes it is right to care for its most vulnerable members to one where we start to look at certain groups of people and wonder really quite how selfish they must be to choose life when they could so easily opt to be rather less burdensome. Canada and the Netherlands demonstrate the slipperiness of the slope. Lockdown shows our readiness to embrace ideas such as ‘saving our NHS’. Should we not observe history and note how quickly ‘popular morality’ can change, and how, very often, it is something to be rather afraid of?

Sue Honeywell

Macclesfield, Cheshire

Taxing lifestyles

Sir: In her article ‘Stubbed out’ (3 February) Kate Andrews mentions the £10 billion raised by taxing smokers. Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) puts the cost to taxpayers of treating resulting illnesses at £17 billion. Obesity costs the NHS £12 billion and rising, so the £355 million a year from the sugary drinks tax won’t make much of a dent. Alcohol abuse costs £3.5 billion. Lifestyle choices are involved in the majority of cases. If anyone wants to smoke, drink or eat themselves into an early grave, I don’t see why those of us who don’t should be paying to give them the ‘freedom’ to do so. A total of more than £30 billion could very usefully be deployed elsewhere.

Sandra Jones

Old Cleeve, Somerset

Blaise trail

Sir: I read with great interest Susan Hill’s ‘Notes on… St Blaise’ (3 February). I nursed at the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear Hospital in Grays Inn Road in the 1980s. In the entrance hall was a charming stone carving of St Blaise, and that same image was on the hospital badges we were given when we successfully completed the post-registration course.

Visiting the now closed building last year, we noticed that the statue had been removed. I wonder if any of your erudite readers might know where it has gone to?

Ursula Corbett

Whitstable, Kent

Shades of Gray

Sir: Charles Moore is incorrect when describing Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘nationalist Northern Irish’ chief of staff Sue Gray (Notes, 3 February). She is neither. Born in Tottenham, north London, Gray has never made her views on a united Ireland public. The fact she is married to a Northern Irish Catholic and her son is chairman of the Labour party Irish Society is neither here nor there.

Peter Cardwell

London W14