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Sir Anthony Seldon
Sir Anthony Seldon
[color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]Thank you very much. I gratefully accept your suggestion that I know about Mrs Thatcher, but you easily outrank me in knowing so much about so many prime ministers, and therefore being able to make such telling comparisons. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]I strongly agree with your idea of 'landmark' prime ministers, but I would add Disraeli and Lord Salisbury to your list. Each, in very different ways, understood how the extension of the franchise could benefit patriotism and conservatism. They helped prevent a situation in which the rise of the working class would mean the inevitable triumph of socialism. Indeed, they looked through the whole socialist idea of the united, collective working class towards what eventually came about - bourgeois modern society with its much wider distribution of prosperity. The modern world thus broke liberalism (in its Victorian sense), but not conservatism. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]Certainly Margaret Thatcher remains the landmark prime minister of your lifetime and mine, although I would give a bit more credit to Tony Blair than you do. He did modernise the British state (although in ways that, personally, I dislike) and he did rescue the Labour Party as a party of government. I even think - contrary to almost everyone else - that he would have been in a worse position if he had opposed the war in Iraq. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]Conservative leaders since Mrs Thatcher have usually had a bad time defining themselves in relation to her. John Major, example, won the leadership by acting as if he were a Thatcherite while actually disliking her personally and longing to get out of her shadow. He never resolved these tensions. The only one who succeeded was Boris Johnson (though this did not save him from other errors). He so clearly admired her, and shared many of her feelings about the European Union, that he could get away with ignoring her economic legacy without enraging her supporters in party and country. He could be her heir, but be profligate too - a striking example of his famous 'cakeism'. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]You are right that Liz Truss is a strong and genuine disciple of Mrs Thatcher, but before I say more about where that might lead, one needs to consider her circumstances. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]No prime minister since Winston Churchill in the extraordinary circumstances of 1940 has done well out of coming to power without first winning a general election (Harold Macmillan being an arguable excpetion). In this century, both Theresa May and - more surprisingly - Gordon Brown were all at sea, and never won electoral redemption, although the former did technically 'win' in 2017 despite her disastrous performance. Liz Truss comes to power dangerously late in the Parliament and, thanks to the Tories' uneasy way of electing each leader, without a strong mandate among her fellow Conservative MPs. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]In her leadership campaign she made good progress among party members by advocating broadly Thatcherite solutions to common problems and boldly expressing her readiness to take on 'the Blob' in order to return fast to growth. This was not a stupid idea or, in principle, sectarian or right-wing. The overhang of EU membership and the unique circumstances of Covid had made Britain much more bureaucratised than in the past, so the constituency of people wanting more liberty and growth is strong. The country is clogged by statism, regulation and tax. Her phrase about the 'anti-growth coalition' has some resonance. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]However, she may not have considered hard whether circumstances permit. With such a jittery economic situation, the return of inflation and the world crisis of the invasion of Ukraine and related market turmoil have made it extremely hard for her to achieve what she wants in the time she has set herself (the next election). When her Government put out its 'mini-budget', the markets spooked because they had not been shown the Chancellor's working and therefore did not know how the tax cuts would be paid for. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]She also faced the adamantine, though not directly stated opposition of the Treasury and the Bank of England. This was partly her fault for alienating them with her rhetoric, but also theirs for having presided over the wrong policies. It became convenient for 'the Blob' to blame her administration for changes most of which were inevitable before she became prime minister. In particular, the rise in interest rates, essential to restoring economic reality, was coming anyway. The pain it must cause is now, largely unfairly, blamed on her. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]Truss has suffered from being careless of how little room for manoeuvre she had on winning. In this, she is quite different from Mrs Thatcher - by temperament, but also in her situation. As Leader of the Opposition for more than four years before becoming PM, Mrs Thatcher had the time and space to work out what was wrong with the economic policies of Labour and develop coherent plans of her own. Even so, when she won in 1979, her economic reforms came close to being swamped by hostile colleagues and initial problems, including very high interest rates. It was only after the 1981 Budget that the markets truly realised Mrs Thatcher would not 'U-turn', but was charting a course which might succeed. She believed in restoring market confidence and balancing the books as a prerequisite of supply-side reform (though she did begin some supply-side reform at once e.g. the abolition of exchange controls and of the Price Commission). She took nothing for granted. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]I fear Liz Truss, despite being an experienced cabinet minister, did not immediately recognise the difference between campaigning and governing and is being punished accordingly. All is not lost, but her first step made the next ones much more difficult. Mrs Thatcher never claimed that economic success was easy or instant, but emphasised pain before gain. Liz Truss is more Reaganite than Thatcherite. Unlike Reagan, she lacks the power of a mighty economy and a reserve currency to enable her to take risks. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]Has she got the space or ability to be a landmark PM? I wouldn't rule it out, but it does not feel like it at this point. Besides, she comes after more than 12 years of Tory-led government. When Mrs T first came in, Conservatism was refreshed. Hard to manage that just now. [/highlight][/color] [color=rgb(34, 34, 34)][highlight=transparent]Best wishes[/highlight][/color]
Lord Charles Moore
Lord Charles Moore
Your letter reminds me afresh what an utter giant among PMs Lady Thatcher was. No prime since has left country, economy and national pride in a far stronger position. Few PMs indeed achieved that same feat before. Liz Truss is merely the latest to become victim of trying to aspire to the Thatcher standard without properly understanding her genius. She either hadn't read your three volume Thatcher biography, or didn’t understand it if she did. She is guilty of a catastrophic misreading of Thatcher and of history. Free-market policies are one matter: but they are nothing without understanding the politics and presentation needed to implement them. Thatcher didn’t explode on the scene in May 1979 as did Truss and Kwarteng like coiled springs suddenly being released. She bided her time, build friendships across the party, appointed the best people, and only struck when she judged the time was right.On a human level, it is incredibly sad that two such hard-working, intelligent and dedicated politicians as Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng should have experienced such a humiliation. As I write this, the latter has just departed: perhaps Liz Truss will have gone by the time our letters are published. If she does manage to cling on, the high hopes of the premiership will be all but over. We agree on much: but let me take issues on one area where we don’t. Thatcher was respectful of public servants. Labelling them as ‘the blob’, as Truss and Johnson have done, has been ill-mannered and counter-productive. The civil service is in urgent need of reform, but it does not need denigration. Yet instead of real improvement and modernisation, the civil service has been disparaged and has become demoralised, and its performance has declined.Lady Thatcher would never have achieved what she did without her reliance on brilliant officials, not just Bernard Ingham and Charles Powell, but also Robert Armstrong, Robin Butler, Clive Whitmore and many more within No.10, and across Whitehall. She and her ministers got the best from their officials because they gave clear instructions, were good at their jobs themselves and everyone knew what was wanted.I hope that the current political hiatus will not set back the pursuit of free-market policies because they urgently need to be extended into areas she barely touched, including education and health. The last 12 1/2 years of Conservative governments have not seen the intellectual fervour or coherence of the Thatcher years. There has been no clear direction of travel or acting out of consistent Conservative policy. Government indeed will be bigger when the 14 years come to an end in all likelihood in 2024. John Major did more to embed and gently extend the Thatcher revolution I believe than you may allow. We may disagree on that point, but I doubt we do that David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss would all have achieved more if, rather than being vaguely aware of (and unnerved by) her aura, they had done more to study and learn from the Thatcher premiership.
Sir Anthony Seldon
Sir Anthony Seldon
By coming last in our sequence, I have the advantage of knowing how the tale of woe ended (although you certainly saw it coming).The thing that most surprises me about this chain of events is that the participants seem to have learnt so little from being in government for so long. Liz Truss held five Cabinet posts, including the Foreign Secretaryship, and being Chief Secretary to the Treasury, before she became Prime Minister. Yet she seems not to have realised what is bound to happen - especially at a time of severe economic difficulty - if you spring unfunded tax cuts upon the country and the markets. She treated the presentation of her economic programme as if it were an election campaign rather than the considered actions of a government, so she was not thinking much about risk. She acted as if she were not only new to 10 Downing Street, but new to government. She ignored Mrs Thatcher's most oft-repeated old saw: 'Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted.'I think this problem is endemic in our baby-boomer generation of politicians and in those younger than us, because they have never really had to deal with the serious prospect of national impoverishment, which Margaret Thatcher did. This dates back to Tony Blair. He came to power in 1997 on the back of our economic success which followed the collapse, in 1992, of Britain's membership of the ERM. His entire appeal was expressed in his slogan 'Things can only get better' and in Peter Mandelson's dictum that New Labour was 'the politics of both/and rather than either/or'. David Cameron was not dissimilar, declaring 'Let sunshine rule the day'. Boris Johnson, too, preferred economic boosterism to confronting difficulty. We still have not had a leader who wants to face how bad things are. I rather think that, if Rishi Sunak becomes Prime Minister, he will try to do so. All of the above PMs experienced some economic dips, but both parties learnt the wrong lesson from the credit crunch of 2008/9 and accepted the nostrum that quantitative easing had abolished the laws of financial gravity. Immense harm has been done by 'permanently' low interest rates, and now all Western countries are starting to pay the real price. The final piece of unreality is Net Zero - the idea that you can set an arbitrary date for decarbonising an industrial economy without enormous cost and severe loss of competitiveness to less virtuous, non-European rivals. This western European error has been ruthlessly exposed by Putin, using the economic power of his gas and oil supplies as a weapon of war. No political party since the 1980s has confronted these difficulties, and we shall not get out of them until at least one of them does. This applies, by the way, to all: Britain's problem at this moment may be more spectacular, in political terms, than most others; but in substance, almost all EU countries face comparable difficulties. You are right that the relationship in Britain between ministers and officials has worsened and this has done much damage. I agree that, however rough they are in private, ministers should not denounce civil servants in public. Much better to work closely with them, sometimes abrasively, but always constructively. I would add, though, that the civil servants are as bad as the politicians. The political neutrality of the past has definitely diminished. I am not speaking of allegiance to a political party, but to certain mindsets. The British civil service is dangerously monochrome about the EU (anti-Brexit), about Net Zero (uncritically in favour) and about 'woke' issues (see its response to 'taking the knee' for Black Lives Matter and to trans issues). It obstructs governments who think differently. It is simultaneously too ineffective and too powerful. It is time to think harder about markets again. Libertarians see them as the solution to everything, which is wrong. But free markets are the best way of discerning the truth about what people want and how they create wealth. Overwhelmed by the benefits of victory in the Cold War more than 30 years ago, we have squandered the dividend of liberal economics. This will get worse before it gets better.
Lord Charles Moore
Lord Charles Moore
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Dear Jan Hasbrouck, [highlight=transparent]I’ve been wondering about ways to improve global education outcomes around the world. In an ideal world, such a policy or initiative should: (1) help students to discover and unlock their potential; (2) not drain the public cof...
Dear Boris Johnson, I am writing this letter in regards to the safety of women in the UK (Great Britain ) due to the rise in sexual offences and killings, murders and this is now risen to the notch that now even the Metropolitan police officer, being one of the offender...
Dear John List, Firstly, congratulations on your new role as Chief Economist at Walmart. It’ll be interesting to see the experiments and initiatives that your team gets up to over the next few years. (I’ve also picked up a copy of your book, The Voltage Effect, and ...
Dear Eleanor, I’m not Paul Krugman. But I enjoyed the letter that you wrote to him on ‘thinking about economics’. Perhaps I can share a few thoughts with you because I am curious as to what you might make of them. (For context, my background is in economics and fi...
Dear Joe Biden, I am writing to you to tell you that you have wasted an opportunity. Eighty one million people voted for you last year, and I feel that you are letting them down. You worked very hard to reach this point, so why are you throwing it away? You are a De...
Dear Nadine Dorries, I am writing to you today to express my concern over the UK government’s current approach towards understanding social responsibility in the digital world. As I am sure you are well aware in the past decade the internet has gone from a technological...
Dear Tony Blair, Given the nature of this particular competition and your extraordinary career of course, we have not had the opportunity to meet. However, I would like to extend a degree of gratitude to you. I grew up in an inner-city London school which was revolu...
Dear Iain Duncan Smith, I hope this letter finds you well. I recently attended an event by the Ribble Valley Conservatives where you were their guest speaker. It seems many of those attending that night had questions to put to you, for which you gladly answered. I was unfor...
Dear Pano Christou, I am writing to you as someone who has spent a while working in the food and drink industry. I have done many a busy shift making the types of drinks that you sell at Pret, and I don’t think that your staff are given adequate training, resulting in v...
Dear Boris Johnson, I am writing to let you know what it feels like to be a female, in a world where it seems that there is no support. Whilst the days are getting darker and the streets are becoming unsafe, all I wish to do is go home to the lovely warmth. Some days I ...
Dear The next president-elect of the Republic of South Korea, Dear Mr./Ms. President-elect, Whoever you are, I congratulate you in advance. Several months from now, when you will be inaugurated as the head of state of the Republic of Korea(South Korea), the nation will be facing numerous challenges that requ...
Dear Imran Khan , You are a populist leader. And a certain amount of disappointment is to be expected when the country elects a populist because it is simply not possible to translate all the ambitious (and some outlandish) campaign promises into government policy. Ta...
Dear Enrico Letta, Dear Enrico Letta, My name is Ryan Bensen, I am 23 years old and currently studying Film&Politics at university in Scotland. I was born near Siena (Italy), the city in which you were voted for this October, and grew up in the province of Lucca,...
Dear Paul Kofman, Now and then we hear the suggestion that economists are in need of some formal accreditation. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, pilots, and teachers, after all, require certification before they can practice. So why not economists? Yes, if only we had m...
Dear Jacob Rees-Mogg, As preparations for the Conservative party conference are underway in my home city of Birmingham, I am writing to you in your position as Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. This is a very salient time for me to write to you, as your party’s co...
Dear Kemi Badenoch, I’m writing to you as a member of the LGBTQ+ community urging you to universally ban, not just restrict, conversation therapy for sexual orientation and gender identity. As the Minister for Equalities, it is your duty to uphold and preserve the legal...
Dear Priti Patel, How would you feel if on your twenty-first birthday you were sentenced to prison? Upon hearing the news that twenty-one year old Louis McKechnie will be sentenced to jail for three months, I feel sick. He is a student of mechanical engineering, hopi...
Dear Kate Raworth, On the front cover of my copy of your book, Doughnut Economics, reviewer George Monbiot calls you “The John Maynard Keynes of the 21st Century”. While I’m sure that glowing endorsement helped you to sell more books, it made me cringe inside a little....
Dear Councillor Rose Burley, Thank you for your recent letter in support of your renewed candidacy as councillor for Bentley and Darlaston North. You may not remember me, but I rang you during the early stages of Covid regulations after Walsall Council had taken the decision to ...
Dear Anne-Marie Trevelyan, [justify][highlight=transparent]Firstly, I congratulate you on your appointment to the Department for Transport - a cornerstone for our Levelling Up agenda. I want to write to you to highlight a small but highly important area of the transport sector...
Dear Barack Obama, I am writing to say how much I admire the work, ethic and morals you continue to live by and take in your stride even after leaving office. By listening to you and Springsteen in “Renegades: Born in the USA”and reading your autobiography “A Promised ...
Dear Joe Biden, As we head deeper into springtime this year, millions of Americans across the western United States are gearing up for what is sure to be another intense fire season. Over the past several years, our country has experienced a dramatic uptick in sev...
Dear Boris Johnson, It is with deep sadness that I am writing to you to resign from the Government. It has been an enormous privilege to serve our country as Chancellor of the Exchequer and I will always be proud of how during the pandemic we protected people’s jobs an...
Dear Boris Johnson, It is with regret that I submit my resignation from the Government. It has been an incredible honour to serve in Government over the last ten years under three Prime Ministers, most recently as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Through the ch...
Dear Boris Johnson, It is with deep regret and with a very heavy heart that I tender my resignation as Employment Minister. It has been a privilege to serve in your government and in particular this role where I have helped give work opportunities to many thousands of ...
Dear Boris Johnson, hxbbxbxhx, nfjxjx jdjdjdj hdjxjxjr jdjdjb. hhxjdj chhd, bdjjd hhd. xhjd hsss. Jshdjxbd uxhdj lfidhe hdjdj, jshsgd hxhd khsg hd. hdjd. hdjdjd jdjs jshsg ixh, did ;hfdj, hdhusi idh hdhs kfhd. hudi udhdb kfhdh hdj. hdjsudd jcjjd hshdhm kfhd. ifh, ifh...
Dear Tony Blair, I must admit, when you came forward as the new Prime Minister in 1997, I thought you'd be a good egg. Although I wasn't born yet, when I learnt about you in school at the beginning I was content with you. Well that and the fact that you met Noel Gall...
Dear BJ Campbell, Hello BJ! I had an idea for a potential line of inquiry to pursue, in the spirit of Impossible Conversations and Adversarial Collaborations. The general domain of inquiry is guns, gun violence, and the relationship between gun control, gun rights,...
Dear Boris Johnson, I had desperately hoped that I could avoid writing this letter, but alas there seems no other option left but to step down from my role as Secretary of State for Wales. You will be remembered as a Prime Minister with energy, vision, determination an...
Dear Boris Johnson, It has been the privilege and honour of my life to serve for our country in the department which I believe is the most important, the true engine of opportunity, the Department of Education. I have spent my career dedicated to trying to create oppor...
Dear Boris Johnson, It has been the honour of my life to serve as a government minister, under three successive Prime Ministers, including these last five years as Pensions Minister. My view is that it is important to work as a team and deliver on the priorities that m...
Dear Boris Johnson, I write to resign as Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party. I had taken the view that there must be parliamentary oversight of the inevitable leadership contest. However, there are others who can provide that. The current situation is clearly unten...
Dear Keir Starmer, I am writing to discuss the current position of the Labour party, in how it has the potential to change the current political, economic and social situation for Britain, but is failing to convince the public to support its cause. It is too simple to ...
Dear Boris Johnson, I am writing this letter in order to address this current major issue regarding the safety of women in the UK which has clearly sky rocketed to hundreds of women who are at risk due to lack of protection by the police who themselves are the danger an...
Dear Any Lebanese Politician (i.e. Najib Mikati, Hassan Diab, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah), I always start my letters with ‘I hope you are doing well’ as a common courtesy, but honestly, after the suffering you have put my country through, that is far from the truth. I am in no way shape or form qualified to be a politician and nor do I ...
Dear Viktor Orban, I would like to write to you today, because I am interested what Hungary do you imagen? Because the way you rule the country right now, not only stop it from developing, but make it worse than it was. The government should focus on education and hea...
Dear Antonio Guterres, I am writing to express my concern about poverty. I think that it is a vital issue that we need to take immediate action for because it could save many people. I am Victoria Lazaridou, an English Literature student from the University of Roehampton, ...
Dear Nicola Sturgeon, As a trans person living in Britain, it is a self-evident reality that the nation is hostile towards gender-diverse people politically. Despite this, you have come out publicly in January in support of trans right, much to the chagrin of the right-wi...
Dear Michelle Donelan, Let me take this opportunity to introduce myself and the reason I am addressing you. I am writing this letter to express my concerns about the environment, and its impact on us students of Brunel University London and other young adults who share the...
Dear Sajid Javid, The coronavirus pandemic of the past two years brought several deep societal issues to the forefront of public conversation. For many, it crystallised problems that had previously seemed intangible, shining light on failing healthcare systems, inequa...
Dear Theresa May, I would like to thank you for considering my invitation. I hope my statement will convey how keenly I am attracted to politics and the reasons I would like to meet you to speak about the current political climate that Britain is facing. I am a 19-ye...
Dear Boris Johnson, The cost of living crisis is spiralling out of control in the UK. Your time in power has coincided with the entirety of my adult life, and I have spent that adulthood watching my country become a steadily more difficult place to attain even the most ...
Dear Jo Stevens, I have been a Cardiff resident in your constituency for around a year now, and am writing to you regarding my experiences of train price rises across Wales. I have not travelled by train in perhaps more than a year due to the constantly increasing pr...
Dear Boris Johnson, After much thought and with deep regret I must inform you that I have made the difficult decision to resign from the government. It has been a great privilege to serve as Economic Secretary to the Treasury under three Chancellors, but I can no longe...
Dear Boris Johnson, With regret, I must resign from the government. I was grateful to you for asking me to return as security minister last year. It has been a particular privilege to serve in this role, and to have the opportunity, alongside dedicated officials, to su...
Dear Boris Johnson, It is with huge regret that I am writing to let you know that I no longer have confidence in your leadership of our country, Government or Party and am writing formally to Sir Graham Brady to register my support for a change of Conservative Party lea...
Dear Vladimir Putin, Dear Mr Putin, Since early childhood, I could not imagine my life without my country. And you were my role model. You were the image of power, the ability not to rule but to help people and to move forward the whole amazingly huge country with incre...
Dear Muhammadu Buhari, I am writing to express my concern for the country of Nigeria following recent events and my personal experience in the country over this past year. I reside in London, England, however me and my family are originally Nigerian and have visited the co...
Dear Priti Patel, I am an eighteen-year-old currently studying Politics & International Relations and the proud daughter of two incredibly hardworking and diligent immigrants. I am writing to you about the “crisis” of Immigration that we face both as a Nation and Wo...
Dear Joe Biden, Our lives are intimately tied to and dependent upon the labour of seafarers. This is because ninety per cent of the world's goods are transported through shipping. However, despite this intimate connection to the lives of almost everyone across the g...
Dear Barack Obama, My name is Soni Gold. I am from Nigeria, a country that holds so much promise because of its human and natural resources, yet so much pain for the ordinary citizen because of poor, corrupt leadership. I have lived in Nigeria for five decades, first ...
Dear Nadhim Zahawi, Before I state the purpose of my letter, I would like to congratulate you on your new appointment as Secretary of State for Education. I believe, if even just going by your excellent and efficient Covid vaccine programme as vaccine deployment ministe...
Dear Boris Johnson, With sincere regret I am resigning from HM Government. I stood for Parliament because I want to make our country a better place to live. I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to serve as Arts Minister, Care Minister and Exchequer Secret...
Dear Boris Johnson, It is with deep sadness that I am writing to you to resign as Vice Chair of the Conservative Party. This is not a decision I have arrived at lightly, and it has been an honour to work as part of your team. I have been loyal and supported you through...
Dear Mikheil Saakashvili, I am writing to say, even though you have made multiple mistakes and made people angry, I still appreciate you, you made the little country Georgia, which was often mistaken for the state of Georgia,globally-known, you made people believe in little h...
Dear Boris Johnson, It was a privilege to have been asked to come back into Government to serve as Secretary of State for Health & Social Care at such a critical time for our country. I have given every ounce of energy to this task, and am incredibly proud of what we ha...
Dear Boris Johnson, With great sadness I am resigning as Solicitor General. To be in government is to accept the duty to argue for difficult or even unpopular policy positions where that serves the broader national interest. But it cannot extend to defending the indefe...
Dear Boris Johnson, It has been an enormous privilege to have been asked to serve my country as a Minister. I was honoured to be a Health minister during the pandemic and to work collectively with others to deliver care to the vulnerable and drive solutions to the chal...
Dear Boris Johnson, It is with real sadness that I write to tender my resignation from HM Government. I have been honoured to serve in a number of roles within government over the past few years, most recently as the Minister for Housing. This is a role, although havin...
Dear Boris Johnson, I write to resign and, with regret, to leave the post of Courts' Minister. I felt duty bound to remain in post given the very challenging circumstances facing the criminal courts. I took the view there had to be some semblance of Government in this ...
Dear Internet, Story of the residents fighting to shut down the biomedical waste treatment plant in Govandi. It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that I realised that I must join the fight for clean air. As biomedical waste increased tenfold at health facilities an...
Dear Rishi Sunak, In taking over as prime minister from Liz Truss, you have inherited a difficult economic and political situation, to say the least. As a Tory who leans libertarian, I opposed your leadership bid over the summer and was thrilled by Truss’s refreshing ...
Dear Jennifer Dresden, [highlight=transparent]I am an ordinary citizen who is concerned about the future of democracy. You know better than I that the US midterm elections will be a bellwether for things to come.[/highlight] [highlight=transparent]You gave a fantastic int...
Dear Internet, [highlight=transparent]I have sometimes wished for an edit button on this platform. I even went as far as to send the founder of Collate a request for this very feature. I happen to be a clumsy perfectionist, you see. I have an uncanny knack for find...
Dear Biden, Joe biden have big wrong as economically because he distributed billions of dolars in the pandemic . This was bad thing for economic but that was good as social state . All world effected this progress. All stock markets had big acceleration as posi...
Dear Internet, [highlight=transparent]A few months ago, a family-friend who we will call Valerie bought two tickets for herself and her friend for travel long overdue. They were excited to visit someplace exotic after extended lockdowns and closed international bor...
Dear Internet, [highlight=transparent]A few weeks ago, I wrote a short letter about the “[/highlight][color=rgb(17, 85, 204)][highlight=transparent][url=https://www.collate.org/closed_letter/dealing-with-our-gelatinous-ignorance/sender]gelatinous ignorance[/url][/h...
Dear Michael Kasumovic, [highlight=transparent]I came across an interesting article on [/highlight][color=rgb(17, 85, 204)][highlight=transparent][url=https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/why-do-we-play-violent-video-games#:~:text=Kasumovic%20says.,to%20satisfy%20...
Dear Alexandra Stein, [highlight=transparent]In light of recent political developments, I was looking for books and papers to better understand the nature of human organization and social structure. I found your research on cults especially illuminating. So t[/highlight]h...
Dear Rachel Elnaugh, I have been visiting the Peak District National Park for many years and regard Cressbrook Dale as one of its gems of natural beauty and biodiversity. The woodland and wildflowers through the seasons are a particular joy, and as National Park access l...
Dear George Mumford, [highlight=transparent]I bought my second copy of The Mindful Athlete a few days ago. This time, I plan to give it to a friend as a Christmas gift. You see, this friend of mine is facing a series of setbacks and personal hardships. But I am hopeful t...
Dear Internet, When a nobody like myself writes in letter form to a public figure, there is only a small probability that she will see my words amidst the flood of mail and messages that she inevitably receives. Beyond that, there is an even smaller chance that she...
Kevin
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