Letters: Why we need music festivals

Disastrous decisions

Sir: One cannot but agree wholeheartedly with Lionel Shriver (‘This is not a natural disaster’, 16 May). Given the unremarked impact of other diseases which she mentioned, Covid-19 is small beer. The government set out on the right path with its herd immunity policy, but was bounced into lockdown by the ‘science’, hounded by the media in full cry. We are now in a situation where employees, mainly in the public sector and supported by the unions, refuse to rise from their feather beds and return to work. This is not a situation from which we will recover easily — if at all.
George Kelly
Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire

Guarantee improvement

Sir: I note James Forsyth’s comment on how arms-length bodies will lose their autonomy (‘The British state needs rewiring’, 16 May). I was part of the team that conducted the triennial review of the Big Lottery Fund in 2014, and we concluded that the governance structure of quangos is poor.