Letter from David Cameron

Dear MANUEL, This morning Michael Gove and I were going to tour Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College in Lewisham. We were going to give speeches about the importance of maths, and we were going to announce that Carol Vorderman had agreed to lead a new Conservative Party Maths Taskforce. That's what was going to happen, anyway. Like other parts of the country London virtually ground to a halt this morning as it tried to cope with the heaviest snowfall in 18 years. Hatcham College was one of the many schools that was forced to close, so the three of us played in the snow instead! The snow goes on, but so must the show - we've just launched the taskforce from our campaign headquarters. You can read my speech or watch the webcast here. In the last eight years we've slipped from eighth to twenty-fourth in the international maths league tables. We've got to find a way to inspire more children to learn maths, and bright people to teach it. You wouldn't be able to read this email without maths. You wouldn't have a computer or mobile phone to view it on, never mind the internet. If we are going to be able to shift our battered, unbalanced economy towards the high-tech industries that maths enables, we are going to have to do much, much better. David