Protests against this 'something for nothing' government

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/30/protests-against-something-for-nothing-government

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In 1960, when I was training to be a teacher at London's Institute of Education, we were told that the children we would be teaching would grow up into a world where no one worked five days a week. Those were the days, before SATs or league tables, when we assumed that the costs and benefits of increasing automation would be shared among us, not the benefits to the most privileged and the costs to the most vulnerable. In those days we really were all in this together (Osborne tells jobless to work for benefits, 30 September).

We were told that our tasks as teachers included encouraging children to make creative use of this new leisure. The most important quality in a teacher would be to be a well-rounded personality, who made good use of their own leisure.

To this end there were no lectures on Friday afternoons but a variety of creative activities including art, pottery, music, poetry. What happened to this vision of what it means to be human? Mary Brown Stroud, Gloucestershire

• George Osborne says: "No one will get something for nothing." I look forward to him and his millionaire pals who run this government returning their inherited wealth forthwith. David Brown Hampsthwaite, North Yorkshire

• First the Conservatives want people to move out of their homes into nonexistent smaller houses; now they want people to go to unemployment offices every day to look for nonexistent jobs.

And as for the creeping privatisation of the NHS, well, 50,000 of us made it clear at the start of the Conservative party conference that we don't like it (Report, 30 September). Even party members were standing up to the government's airy dismissal of their concerns.

I want to know how many spare bedrooms cabinet members have. And do they know what proportion of benefit a daily trip to the jobcentre would cost? Vicky Seddon Sheffield

• My husband and I, both pensioners, marched for the first time in Manchester in support of the NHS, which came into being the year I was born. There were more than 50,000 of us – all ages, from all over the UK. It was the largest protest in Manchester in our lifetime, I believe. This newspaper devoted to the march a tiny passage at the bottom of page 7 – part of which was negative and gave a completely erroneous view of the event as a whole. No wonder the government doesn't listen to the "thousands of ordinary people" Frances O'Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, spoke of, when the media ignore such a protest. Christine Lomax Manchester

• A three-quarter page spread, banners waving – oh, an American protest (Washington stalemate threatens to force US government into historic shutdown, 30 September). Another three-quarter page spread, banners waving – oh, another American protest (Trial opens on BP Deepwater disaster fine). So where is the TUC march, in the Guardian's home town, Manchester, protesting about the dismantling of the British NHS? The huge rally? The passion and commitment of the speeches? Discovered eventually with a microscope. Doreen Clifford Manchester

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