Martha Gill fully elides the positive and creative aspects of boredom (“Riots, shooting, sadism… blame it on the boredom of social media”). Boredom usually precedes a period of creativity, and artists and authors praise its benefits, from Anish Kapoor to Susan Sontag; Grayson Perry calls boredom a “creative state”. In time, that restlessness will give way to new ways of thinking.
Gill rightly points out that the rise of boredom “is a difficult one to solve”. Digital natives are especially at risk of the negative state that philosopher Lars Svendsen calls situative boredom, where a specific situation creates the boredom, such as Gill’s stimulation-poor nightmares of the monotony of new towns, or the bored, violence-prone participants on X during the recent UK riots.
We could all do well to follow education expert Dr Teresa Belton’s advice: “For the sake of creativity, perhaps we need to slow down and stay offline from time to time”, to stop avoiding boredom and let our minds disengage, be curious, and daydream. In Dorothy Parker’s words: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
Prof Dr Suzanne Buchan
London SW2
TikTok? I prefer tick, tock
How I marvelled at AL Kennedy’s precise article (“In a broken world, I need my fix of watch repairs”). Just like a fully wound, perfectly running watch, it was neither too fast nor too slow. While having no great belief in a previous golden age to set against the manifest horrors and injustices of our time, I do feel the grace and balance of my three wind-up watches.
I bought my watch in 1963, when I was 15. My father’s wrist watch dates from the 1940s, and his pocket watch from the First World War. They belong to another era, one we have jettisoned for short-term profit and instant fixes. They tick steadily towards our own probable oblivion. And in their exquisite workings, speak of a different world.
John Clements
Hennock, Bovey Tracey, Devon
Just blame Brexit
In his article on the UK’s forthcoming accession to membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Jonathan Reynolds trots out the same defence of Brexit as did the Tories (“Greater trading options are crucial to the rebuilding of the country”).
He claims there is a world of opportunity beyond the EU that was closed to the UK before Brexit and now, unleashed from Brussels, we are free to trade globally, while winning better conditions for trading in Europe. According to the UN’s Comtrade database, in 2023 Germany exported $105.95bn (£80bn) in goods and services to China; in the same period, the UK’s exports to China were $34.29bn. The figures for India in 2023 are $12.87bn for the UK and $17.97bn for Germany. Exports by Germany to Peru, a CPTPP member state, were $1.19bn, with the UK recording $263.69m. Germany, despite, and more probably because of its EU membership, has no difficulty in achieving large export figures in key global markets. Germany also benefits from the EU’s trade treaties with 41 countries, including Japan and a treaty in operation but not yet ratified, with Peru.
Reynolds says many UK exporters have stopped doing business in Europe because of the mess the Conservative government made of the withdrawal negotiations. But the prime suspect here is Brexit itself. No deal that Labour seeks to do with the EU can ever replace what was lost to Brexit. Reynolds should also know that most UK businesses that stopped trading with Europe are SMEs. They can’t afford the time and money involved in the post-Brexit rules. It is extremely unlikely they will find the money or time or be willing to take the enormous risks involved in trying to open new markets many thousands of miles away.
It is incomprehensible that Labour thinks it can defy geography, commercial logic and stark economic reality by clinging to the wholly discredited ship of Brexit.
Martin Roche, executive committee, the European Movement in Scotland
Glasgow
AI is the arts teacher’s friend
Far from despairing, teachers should seize the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of humanities and English in future deployment of artificial intelligence (“AI cheating is overwhelming the education system – but teachers shouldn’t despair”).
In schools and the workplace, AI is most easily applied to the teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths because of their logical structuring and pragmatic purposes. AI tends to invent sources and provides largely bland, formulaic essays. Students in history and English literature are taught to discriminate between inaccurate or even fake sources, select the most powerful, relevant studies and apply them to a far-reaching argument, expressed in more individual styles.
Moreover, to use AI most effectively, users must hone their questions to perfect precision, which takes sophisticated language skills and critical thinking. Using AI is like using any other tool: the more skilled the user, the better they understand the subject and know the limitations of said tool, the better the outcomes. Perhaps the government needs to rethink its excessive emphasis on Stem and revitalise the arts and humanities to ensure that future generations are clever enough to exploit AI rather than be ruled by bland beliefs in its limited efficacy.
Yvonne Williams
Ryde, Isle of Wight
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Decriminalise prostitution
Sonia Sodha is right that “male demand for prostitution is not innate. Governments shape it through legislation” (“Punish the men who pay for sex, rather than the women lured into that life”). But legislation also shapes women’s experiences of offering sex for money.
Criminalising the buying of sex doesn’t stop men from buying it. It pushes transactions further underground and forces sex workers away from the support and protection of civil society groups and law enforcement. Grassroots organisations like the English Collective of Prostitutes have been arguing this for decades, and the evidence supports their case: after New Zealand decriminalised prostitution in 2003, the vast majority of sex workers said they were more likely to report incidents of violence to the police. Decriminalising prostitution and legally regulating the activities that surround it is the best way of promoting the safety of prostitutes.
Ms. Sodha is also right that we must crack down harshly on the abhorrent criminals who traffic and exploit women as sex slaves. But Ms. Sodha should appreciate that sex slavery is not prostitution, just as plantation slavery is not farm labour: although demand for the latter increases the profitability of the former, there are ways to reduce the profitability of sex slavery without denying prostitutes the protections they deserve. Justice demands that we don’t pursue one at the expense of the other.
Emily Loch and Sasha Arridge
Oxford
Cheap energy: my solution
When deciding which anchorage to use for new offshore windfarms, would it be cheaper to use the floating option to save paying the King any rent (“Why turbines that float could be the new wave in wind power”)?
David Prothero
Harlington, Bedfordshire
No to Myanmar sanctions
Simon Tisdall says that the disintegration of Myanmar along ethnic lines can be prevented by expanding and enforcing more sanctions (“China’s deadly divide-and-rule tactics in Myanmar risk shock waves across region”). Doesn’t he remember that the last military dictatorship was brought to an end, not via sanctions, but via engaging the military? Moreover, sanctions savage ordinary people far more than they do the regime, as an unprecedented flow of refugees from Myanmar into neighbouring countries readily confirms.
Besides, Myanmar is not what it was in the 1990s. Today, it is being actively courted by two regional powers. China is helping Myanmar with the massive gas pipeline project; India is building a “multi-modal transit transport project”, linking its Mizoram state to the Sittwe port in Myanmar. It is difficult to see how, given Myanmar’s deepening regional ties, economic sanctions could possibly pave the way for the military to relinquish power.
Myanmar faces overwhelming challenges, ranging from bloody ethnic conflicts to exploding inequality and catastrophic threats posed by climate change. Expanding and enforcing sanctions under such circumstances, instead of weakening the military regime, is likely to force more refugees into neighbouring countries.
Randhir Singh Bains
Gants Hill, Essex