The story about passwords highlighted a major problem for silver surfers.

Why do we have to have a different password for every application we use on the same device? We could of course use a login/password management tool but we have to remember what login/password to use.

Instead, could we have recognition software, retina or finger print, which some of the more enlightened developers have installed. The purveyors of state of the art software still use, in the main, antiquated security systems.

I used the present type of security back in 1966 when I started out in IT – or as it was known then EDP. It didn’t work very well then and doesn’t work as well now.

However, the stakes are much higher now. So much more can be lost to internet theft and accordingly security ought to be more intelligent to thwart malware, ransom software and the like.

Come on developers help us users – especially the old ’uns.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Unintended consequences

What a delicious irony it is that David Cameron’s attempt to unite his party and save it from the onslaught of Ukip has simply resulted in the creation of the Brexit party.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

A real life ‘ I, Daniel Blake’ scenario

A six stone man, emaciated after being found fit for work in 2017, wins his appeal, but dies months later.

This is a real life I, Daniel Blake scenario that should shame us.

Private contractors carry out benefit assessments, but are wholly unskilled. Then the DWP gives them more work.

I can tell if someone is too sick to work, yet assessors pass on reports that lead to wrong decisions. We then spend millions on the appeal process, only for 72 per cent of fit-for-work decisions to be overturned.

We are being taken for mugs by big business. If the NHS says you are ill, you are! Why can’t we find a more humane way to assess disability?

Gary Martin

London E17

It’s my party...

All across the world electorates are voting for novel non-mainstream parties or individuals. En Marche!, Syriza, Podemos, Trump etc, and now Volodymyr Zelensky.

In the UK, by contrast, we seem reluctant to embrace radical change fully – even though there is no shortage of aspirants: the Lib Dems, Ukip, the Brexit Party, Greens, Renew, Change UK, DiEM25.

I attribute this failure mainly to the suffocating regulatory capture that the “coalition of privileged interests” has on the media.

In addition, it is so sad that a progressive alliance is being rebuffed by the potentially leading players. What is more important? Country or party? Where have I heard that before?

Which party will come closest to my own four-part “manifesto”? Radical environmental action, pro-EU/Remain, radical economic/taxation reform and public ownership of commons and utilities and, lastly, parliamentary and electoral reform? This last would be the UK’s best hope of escaping the privileged interest’s regulatory capture by creating a “hostile environment” in parliament for the sort candidate most likely to espouse action congenial to that constituency.

Steve Ford

Haydon Bridge

Selfish parenting?

Genevieve Roberts says that “Becoming a parent on your own terms is not selfish”. I beg to differ.

While I have massive sympathies with anyone struggling to become pregnant, Roberts misses – along with many others exploring the same subject – one vital point: the view of the child yet to be conceived.

Once grown up, this child will often seek help for considerable mental issues arising from identity problems: “who am I?” they may ask, being unable to trace half of their DNA to make some kind of connection to their biological fathers. The search can be both unconscious and tortuous.

In my opinion as a psychotherapist who deals with such clients on an alarmingly frequent basis, no amount of love and care by their mothers (or “step” fathers) can adequately compensate for that gap in their psyche. Becoming a parent on those terms can indeed be selfish if the parent refuses to even consider this vital need of her child.