Charities cannot substitute for state services | Letters

Robert Howard writes that it is bureaucracy and a lack of political will that prevents a return to ‘the good old days’. Plus a letter from Geof WoodRe your editorial (The Guardian view on the voluntary sector and the state: this crucial relationship needs resetting, 14 January), in the early 1990s I published a paper, States Without Citizens: The Problem of the Franchise State, bemoaning the state’s increasing reliance on the provision of essential services by voluntary, non-ri