Letters - April 06, 2018

We certainly need a new European Union referendum, as the truth about Brexit is beginning to dawn upon people.

Brexit means cutting ourselves off from our main export market, cutting our nose to spit our face.

Brexit will mean that everyone in Britain will be worse off financially.

Car firms and other major industries will move from Britain to mainland Europe with thousands of job losses – Jaguar Land Rover is already planning its new car in Austria.

The north of England will be especially hard hit by job losses.

The farming industry will be hard hit with the loss of workers from Eastern Europe and this will mean a steep rise in food prices for everyone.

The NHS will be badly damaged as we lose European doctors and nurses. British universities will lose important income from young people with high skills no longer coming to study in Britain.

Even the City of London is already losing hundreds of jobs – key financial workers – to Frankfurt and Paris.

Hoping to find new export markets elsewhere in the world is pie in the sky.

Brexit, expecially a hard Brexit, will be by far the worst decision by any British Government of any political colour since the Second World War.

Mike Pearson

via email

TRANSPORT

Help cyclists – fit speed limiters

As a result of the landmark case of a musician winning a claim for hearing loss (caused by sitting in front of the brass section of an orchestra), and with a High Court judge saying: “Musicians are entitled to the protection of the law, as is any other worker,” might we now have a judgement that cyclists are entitled to the protection of the law, as is any driver?

Drivers have a whole raft of high-tech safety devices and cyclists only have polystyrene helmets – they don’t offer the same protection as steel shells, impact zones, air bags and so on.

Also, where four ‘fat’ tyres and a four-wheel drive helps to prevent drivers from skidding in treacherous driving conditions (caused by climate change), two skinny, high-pressure tyres on a lightweight bicycle don’t.

Further, given that Elon Musk has plans to fly to Mars in the foreseeable future, and the RAF claims “this is a really good time to be involved, not only in the air force, but in the aviation and space industry, as we develop new technologies and new ways of pushing human boundaries”, shouldn’t speed-limiting equipment be fitted to all the nation’s motor vehicles?

After all, if we need to reduce plastic pollution and encourage recycling, shouldn’t we be doing even more to reduce CO2 emissions and encourage cycling?

Won’t the future of the next generation be threatened if we don’t?

Allan Ramsay

via email

ECONOMY

We have to buy British goods

Tory MP John Redwood says we are the world’s fifth-largest economy, but what he fails to point out is that our economy is based on debt – we are not the world’s fifth-richest country.

Anyone who has just received their new tax coding letter will now be aware that, out of 15 items where the Government spends our tax, the fifth-largest is for repayment of national debt.

And that is because we have a huge trade imbalance – we spend much more on buying from abroad than we gain from our exports.

Many of these imports are not needed, except people think it’s posh to buy foreign food.

The richest countries are those which sell more than they buy, like Germany, France and China.

It doesn’t matter if we leave the EU or not, we have to buy more British goods.

Passports are a good example. Note that Germany, France and several other countries state that making passports is a matter of state security, so don’t go through the tendering process at all, as EU rules allow.

Why don’t we?

John Poulter

Address supplied

LANGUAGE

What’s happened to our postie?

It’s coming to something when you can’t call your post deliverer a postman these days.

Instead, apparently you have to refer to them as postal operatives.

What would children’s favourites Postman Pat and his cat Jess think of it?

The mind boggles.

EB Warris

via email