Danny Dorling

In his novel The Northern Clemency (2008), Philip Hensher described the Sheffield neighbourhood in which I lived at the time (Letters, 20 February). It was in the least affluent corner of the city’s most affluent constituency, Sheffield Hallam. The people there lived secretive lives, as Hensher saw it, and were narrow-minded and selfish. That wasn’t my experience. And in December’s election,...

Ursula Huws is correct to say that the only way a Universal Basic Income can be redistributive is if it is paid for by taxes on employers and on the rich (Letters, 15 August). In fact taxes on the rich would be enough. When UBI is eventually introduced, it will probably be set at a relatively low level, then subsequently raised. Different states will introduce it in different ways. The countries of...

Abenomics, Kristin Surak writes (Letters, 6 June), ‘may have boosted the profits of big exporters, but it has shrunk real household incomes in a country that is now one of the most unequal in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Nearly every country in Europe has a more equal income distribution than Japan, where one in six children now grows up in poverty.’ But one in six...

Lawrence Paulson mentions a recent study in the journal BMJ Open which estimates that because past improvements have stalled, by 2020 there will be an additional 152,000 deaths in the UK (Letters, 19 July). On 18 June the Office for National Statistics reported a further annual 5 per cent absolute rise in mortality in England. This was after they had taken into account the effects of ageing, and is...

‘With each passing month,’ David Runciman writes, ‘there are slightly more old people in the UK voting population, not fewer’ (LRB, 10 May). Until recently this was true. However, in the first four months of 2018 some 20,215 more people died than died during the same period in the previous five years across England and Wales. As a consequence, with each passing month this year, there have been...