Accountability in the Leveson Inquiry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/14/leveson-accountability-amnesia?fb=native

Your queries for the prime minister regarding the Leveson inquiry (After the admissions, Cameron faces a question of judgment, 14 June) highlight a very important issue over the wider political and business culture.

Heading a government who came to power on the back of a campaign on responsibility, Cameron now seems to be doing everything to avoid it. He scolded Labour for not acting sensibly when the economic onus was on them but now that he finds himself in the spotlight during the Leveson inquiry, he's refusing to swallow the blame.

What would really fill the public with confidence would be seeing our leader own up and show some accountability, rather than pass it on into the depths of ministers and civil servants where somebody down the ladder will take the bullet. Coulson, Brooks and Hunt have all been in the firing line, and rightly so, but the common denominator here is Cameron. He remains unscathed, while he should be accepting his culpability.

This undemocratic political culture has taken over the corporate world too, in which companies work in such convoluted mazes that responsibility is impossible. No product and service can be pinned down to one company, so that any blame is passed on or simply batted off by careful yet deceitful small print.

Politics and business are the controlling forces in our society and both trade transparency and accountability for money and power. It's a harrowing cycle of circumvention and it will only change from the top.
Sam Charles-Edwards
Rugby, Warwickshire

Dad's article about gay marriage

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/13/marriage-ministering-discrimination

I found your front-page story (Church threatens new rift with government over gay marriage, 12 June) infuriating. As a retired Anglican vicar, I took the marriage of a number of people who were divorced with a clear conscience, knowing that there was a time not so long ago when it was impossible to be married in church once you had been divorced.

It should be perfectly possible for more enlightened parishes to celebrate gay marriages on the same basis, while accepting that other parishes and clergy feel that is a step too far. Although we did not get into the semantics, I was also privileged to bless the partnership of two women in a service recently, assisted by two Anglican lay readers who happened to be the parents of one of the women.

Diversity, democracy and the inevitable disagreeing on various issues are the names of the game for churches as it is for the rest of society. Nurture love is the essential requirement; so let us relax on sex andsexuality, get real and concentrate our justice energy on the much bigger issues of sharing wealth more equitably, abolishing poverty and helping our planet survive and thrive for future generations.
Rev David Charles-Edwards
Rugby, Warwickshire