Police authorities don't want policing to be influenced by unconstrained individuals with a politically motivated agenda
We understand that the home secretary is planning to resurrect proposals for directly elected policing commissioners across England and Wales. This new and uncosted proposal appears to be driven purely by dogma and is undermined by the absence of debate.
Senior police officers and many MPs and peers of all parties have already commented on the dangers to our highly acclaimed model which keeps policing free from party-political interference, but we fear that the public is unaware of the turmoil that may be unleashed by these fresh proposals. The present model has built-in checks and balances that enable police authorities to represent the views of local people when shaping the local service, at a price they are willing to pay.
Police authorities want to ensure that policing continues to be influenced at local and national levels by community voices, not by unconstrained individuals who may have a politically motivated agenda.
Cllr Rob Garnham (Conservative), chair Association of Police Authorities, Ann Barnes (Independent) deputy chair Association of Police Authorities, Cllr Brian Greenslade (Liberal Democrat), Liberal Democrat group leader Association of Police Authorities, Cllr Mark Burns-Williamson (Labour), deputy chair Association of Police Authorities
Why Greece is a special case
Larry Elliott ("IMF has one cure for debt crises") says the IMF is applying a "one size fits all" approach to Greece. In fact, the unprecedented €110bn international support package is tailored to help Greece return to growth by overcoming its two big problems – debt and a lack of competitiveness.Not all countries are in a position to spend their way out of a recession. Greece is one such country. It faces an economic emergency: mounting government debt brought it to the brink of bankruptcy and the country had become too uncompetitive to grow out of its indebtedness.
The severity of the crisis requires that Athens takes decisive action and will involve sacrifices. The alternative would have been much worse for the Greek people.
Caroline Atkinson
director, External Relations, International Monetary Fund, Washington DC
Enlarge the online franchise
In her column on the NHS's summary care record scheme (Comment), Catherine Bennett is right to point out that the government's record of harnessing the web has been far from exemplary. She is also right to point out the large scale of Britain's digital divide and to highlight the fact that this skills gap disproportionately impacts on the disadvantaged.
However, I think she draws the wrong conclusions by arguing that government plans to deliver some public services online "disenfranchise" those who remain offline. On the contrary, I'd argue that it is government failure to accelerate the online delivery of public services that is disenfranchising: by serving to perpetuate a divide in the UK that is unacceptable in a modern and increasingly networked nation. The offline population of the UK is already missing out on an array of consumer savings, information and educational tools and stands to miss out more and more as media and industry expand ever faster into digital-only services.
Government can either support people to exist in this information-poor environment or it can advertise the benefits of technology and offer people the support they might need – via community centres, libraries, schools and colleges.
Martha Lane Fox
UK Digital Champion, founder Race Online 2012 coalition, London W1
Chips or pigswill? No contestHaving read Jay Rayner and Barbara Ellen's discussion, (the Observer Conversation: Should we keep children out of the chip shop?", Comment, last week), I feel they miss out the most important point. In many schools, food is served on plastic trays with hollows that replace plates. The trays are scored by knife and fork and cleaned (ahem) in dishwashers. The fabulously nutritious food resembles pigswill. It's hardly surprising that your average teenager prefers the chippy to queuing for what looks like slops.
Dave Powicke, retired teacher
Sheerness, Kent
I'm a drudge with a grudge
I rue the day I set up home with my partner. Housework is one of the main deal-breakers between us, which is why Barbara Ellen's column ("Happiness is a man prepared to wear Marigolds", Comment) prompted this letter. I wonder how many men are reading this. Does it apply to them? If it does it means that your woman will leave you. She may wait years, while the resentment slowly grows, but she'll leave one day – maybe for a man in Marigolds, or maybe to live on her own, where she'll only have to clean up her own mess and not yours.Name and address supplied
End our children's nightmare
The following letter was sent to Nick Clegg and to the Observer
First of all may we take this opportunity to congratulate you and wish you every success in the new job. We parents in this detention centre need to express our concerns about our children here detained. We need your help as we believe you as leader and participant in this government can take action to protect our civil liberties and human rights. We do appreciate your courage to speak openly about the immigration problems and that makes us think very highly of you. We know that it has been agreed that no children should be detained for immigration purposes but we are still here in the detention centre with children facing deportation.
All of us are vulnerable people with medical conditions suffering from depression and fear of persecution if returned to our country. We feel angry to know that the court allows people to stay in this country who are trying to blow up buses, underground, airports and have not been deported. We have been dragged up and down from our houses to detention causing so much stress to families and children.
Is this because we are a soft touch? Is this because we can not afford to pay good lawyers? We have been often victims of the political system where every time there is a crisis we get the whiplash.
There are about 12 families here in the detention centre and 14 children, plus two pregnant women and one of them has been here about eight months. The children's ages range from one year old to 16 years old. They have been out of school for a long time. Most of them speak English as their first language and do not speak their mother tongue.
They were born in this country and do not know any other country apart from England. They ask questions about why they are here, why they are different from other children and we often haven't got the answers for them. We do think that we have been harshly treated by the Home Office where every case is refused and go through the courts wondering if we are living in the perfect world.
We sought protection from a country we believe in and which has a tradition and good values of democracy. We have escaped our countries because of fear of persecution. Our lives and our children's are in danger. We are living an endless nightmare. We have been in the country for a long time from two years to 11 years. All we want is to have a life and live with decency. We do not want to be a burden on tax payers. We want to take part in building the economy. We want to demonstrate to our children the decent way of living, not the culture of laziness.
We want a system working wisely. We do agree to maintaining border control but not to the extent where families can be destroyed and human rights abolished.
We hope that our voices can be heard and our children will be the last in detention.
Please we are kindly asking you to take action and end our nightmare for families and children.
Shpresa, Kalpesh, Sejal, Sheila, Nazik, Leila, Iman, Akbar, Naeema, Sehar, Khoa and all the families in the detention centre
Yarls Wood detention centre, Beds