Letters: Banks are alienating customers with their opinionated outbursts
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SIR – I left HSBC due to its moronic anti-Brexit advertisement. I am now forced to leave NatWest due to its treatment of Nigel Farage. Are there any non-political banks in the United Kingdom?
Tom Porter
London E6
SIR – Such delicious irony: that Coutts should be embarrassed by its woke attempts to avoid “reputational risk”.
Harvey T Dearden
Llandudno, Caernarfonshire
SIR – Will HSBC or Nationwide, with whom I bank, refuse my custom if I vote Ukip?
Percy Ungate
Ipswich, Suffolk
SIR – Those who think a cashless society is a wonderful idea should reflect on what has happened to Nigel Farage.
Roger Kemp
London N8
SIR – I speak as a British citizen who has previously had his bank account summarily cancelled without explanation. What sticks in the craw is Coutts pompously cancelling customers whose views “do not align with our values”, when its parent company was fined £265 million in 2021 for money laundering failures. What values would those be, then?
Robert Mitchell
Birmingham
SIR – Coutts’s vow to oppose “classism” (report, July 19) is undoubtedly this year’s best example of vacuous corporate virtue-signalling. Its clients have always been the rich, often with long-established family wealth.
Mike Tickner
Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire
SIR – The most disturbing aspect of the Coutts scandal is the equivocation of the liberal-Left – and in particular Sir Keir Starmer, who declined to condemn the bank’s action (report, July 20). This unprincipled position is made more concerning in view of the probable Labour victory in the next election, leaving one wondering who and what else will then be cancelled.
Andrew C Pierce
Barnstaple, Devon
SIR – It would be more beneficial to society if banks closed the accounts of the multitude of scammers they host rather than those of individuals whose beliefs fail to coincide with theirs.
J R C Holden
Ledbury, Herefordshire
SIR – I’ve banked with Coutts for more than 30 years, receiving exemplary service, but now there’s an implication that I must have more than £3 million in the bank – an implication not lost on my children and grandchildren. I have never had such a sum, nor has Coutts ever demanded that I should. I would like my family to know that.
Dr David Murray
Oxted, Surrey
Falkland’s folly
SIR – The decision of the EU to refer to the Falkland Islands as the “Malvinas” (report, July 20) is clearly designed to offend the United Kingdom.
Leaving aside Argentina’s entirely bogus claim to the islands, it is a matter of historical fact that Falkland Sound has been so named since 1690; in honour of Viscount Falkland, then Treasurer to the Navy. The other name the EU included was not originally Spanish anyway, but French: Îles Malouines.
The islands were given this name in 1764 by the French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, who named the area after Saint-Malo in Brittany.
Not long afterwards, de Bougainville landed in Tahiti, which he claimed for France; but the island had already received its first European visitor: the British captain, Samuel Wallis, who had named it King George III Island and claimed it for Britain.
Tahiti is now a French overseas collectivity; but perhaps the UK should reassert its ancient claim, and insist that in all EU documentation it be referred to under its correct name of King George III Island.
Nicholas Young
London W13
Phonics and literacy
SIR – Lord Blunkett (Letters, July 18) rather misses the point on phonics; an alphabet is simply a way of representing sounds with symbols.
The first essential step in learning to read and write is to learn the sound that each letter represents in order to start reading. This is not an addition to teaching literacy, it is the way in which basic literacy has to be taught, as recognised by philosophers from St Augustine to Descartes, and as used in British schools until the 1950s. It was the move away from phonics that led to literacy for adults plunging to a level similar to that of the 19th century, before the Education Act. The OECD figures are shocking.
The renewed focus on phonics in schools from 2010 has transformed literacy rates. It is to be hoped that this focus will be maintained by whichever party is in power.
Michelle Paul
Trustee, Turn Around
St Mary Cray, Kent
Railcard refunds
SIR – Having bought a Senior Railcard, then finding an absence of train services virtually every time I wanted to travel, I investigated the possibility of a partial refund. The advice, however, is very forthright: “Refunding or extending Railcards would come at a significant cost to the taxpayer, at a time when the focus must be on maintaining rail services to support the country’s recovery from the pandemic. Please rest assured that this decision hasn’t been taken lightly and was made at the highest level.”
My question is, why would it cost so much to return my own money?
Michael Turner
Winchester, Hampshire
Pious pooch
SIR – I regularly take Mikey, my two-year-old cockerpoo, to services at St Edmundsbury Cathedral (Letters, July 20).
He comes to Morning Prayer and Communion. When I am on duty as sidesman he trots beside me as I collect the offertory and comes up to the Communion rail, where he is given a pat. Although not always obedient at home, he behaves beautifully in church. Both the clergy and congregation welcome him warmly.
Dee-dee Dobell
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Elizabeth II memorial
SIR – Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, suggested in the House of Commons on Wednesday that a statue of Alan Turing be placed on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth (report, telegraph.co.uk, July 19) .
What has become of Sir John Hayes’s proposal, widely supported in the Commons last September, that Elizabeth II be honoured there?
There could be no more fitting national memorial to her. I suggest she be mounted on horseback to reflect her equine interests and to provide a counterpoise to the equestrian statue of George IV on the other northern plinth.
This would also have the merit of breaking the all-male dominance of Trafalgar Square’s statuary.
Peter Saunders
Salisbury, Wiltshire
Russian bubble
SIR – I have just returned from the West Country after spending a weekend in a rather good hotel. In the narrow country lanes I saw a couple walking and stopped and asked for directions. The man spoke perfect English and said they were staying there, too. I offered them a lift.
The conversation eventually established that they were from St Pertersburg. I asked how life was there. The lady said: “Normal, there is no military presence.” I said: “What do you think of the war in Ukraine?” The joint response was: “What war?”
I said: “How long has Mr Putin
got left in the Kremlin?” They said: “We do not think he has a problem.”
They had little idea of the war or the impact it is having on the Russian economy. They were returning to
St Petersburg the following day. Clearly they live in an elite bubble.
Ian James
Woodborough, Wiltshire
Lord Palmer’s example
SIR – I came back from fishing the Whiteadder in Berwickshire one night in the late 1980s to find the end of my car staved in.
A note on the windscreen asked me to phone a given number: the owner’s horse had shied and kicked out with his rear hooves.
Next day I duly phoned and Lord Palmer himself (Obituaries, July 15) answered, apologised, and asked me to charge all repairs to him.
I never met Lord Palmer, but his actions instilled in me morality and decency – lessons I have not forgotten.
Nicholas Totty
Kirkcudbright
In praise of Sundays free of noisy lawnmowers
SIR – I was interested to read Alan Titchmarsh’s article (Features, July 17) regarding the banning of lawnmowers on a Sunday.
I have lived in Germany for some years, where pretty much all outside noise around the home is banned on Sundays. I thoroughly support the idea of peace and quiet one day a week. Shops here are also shut on Sundays (apart from the bakeries, which open in the mornings, because Germans love their fresh daily bread and rolls), which provides the opportunity for families to spend time together, without outside distractions.
Steve Wallace
Neufahrn, Bavaria, Germany
SIR – In France you are allowed to mow your lawn between 10am and midday on Sundays and public holidays. These times were set in law in 1992.
Glenys Alice Ellis
Bolton, Lancashire
SIR – Here in south-west London the sound of private grass-cutting machinery is as rare as a dry July. Most of the gardens seem to be either concreted over or covered in plastic grass, making mowing an unusual and strangely comforting noise on a summer’s day.
Jerry Greenwood
London SW18
SIR – There are many more noises that should be silenced, especially on a Sunday. Living in Wensleydale, we have to endure noisy motorbikes every weekend in summer.
Mary Sadler
West Witton, North Yorkshire
A tunnel could restore serenity to Stonehenge
SIR – Could Philip Johnston (“The scandalous Stonehenge tunnel is a very British waste of taxpayer money”, Comment, July 19) please visit Hindhead, the site of a tunnel under the Devil’s Punch Bowl, which was argued over for decades?
When I was at school nearby in the 1960s, Hindhead was a dull village blighted by the A3 bisecting it, and the Punch Bowl was scarred by the road round its rim, which was extremely dangerous. However, visiting after the tunnel was built, I couldn’t believe it was the same place. Calm was restored to Hindhead, the Punch Bowl had reverted to a beautiful, natural feature, and the traffic was unseen and unheard.
When I first went to Stonehenge, we could clamber all over that amazing monument. I far preferred my experience when visitors were restrained from touching the stones by a modest fence.
The only reason these projects cost so much is the endless delays caused by consultations and objections. Stop procrastinating and just get on with it.
Margaret Forbes
London E1W
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