Letters - Thursday, December 2, 2021

Responding to deaths in the channel where 31 people died including five women and a little girl drowning, Home Secretary Priti Patel said her thoughts were with the families of dead who lost lives.

This the most stomach-turning political hypocrisy at its worst.

The deaths are a direct consequence of Patel’s malicious policies against asylum seekers seeking asylum in Britain by safe routes. These policies push people to take desperate measures in their quest for a safe dignified life.

She has spent her two years at the Home Office encouraging the public to hate asylum seekers. Patel cries crocodile tears over the dead today, but tomorrow she will be back persecuting them.

She must be removed from office. She has blood on her hands. Seeking asylum is not a criminal act, it is a human right according to Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights. It’s time for a politics that sees asylum seekers as human beings.

Royston Jones

Anchorsholme

The recent events in the Channel are without doubt tragic, but they should not be seen as victims in the sense that none of those people were forced in those boats.

You cannot force the 25,000 people so far this year into rubber boats if they don’t want to, they know what they are doing is illegal.

It is they that approach the people smugglers, not the other way round, and pay them to get them into the country. They know they won’t be sent back to the migrant camps in Calais, so until there’s a change, they’ll keep coming.

Allen Jenkinson

Via email

TRANSPORT

HS2 decision is a funny business

Apart from government ministers or their advisers, who else is likely to benefit from the HS2 network, at a time when many ordinary people are delighted to be working from home?

HS2 might help those who want to retain long distance courtships or romances, with a wide range of extramarital partners. For pensioners, or ordinary people doing regular work for their living, the speed limits imposed by Victorian or later rail technology are not a problem.

Shaving 20 to 30 minutes from the Birmingham to London journey, is far less important than providing predictable and reasonable travel fares. Might a new Northern Powerhouse Energy Centre be set up in the Pennines, if our illustrious PM (pictured) is fired for sleaze or retires? The hot air on offer from his mouth might be a better energy source than a new nuclear power station.

We used to look forward to Not the Nine O’Clock News for a comical parody of the news and political life. With our current PM we have a permanent comedian in residence at Number Ten.

Would the Glaswegian drunk, Rab C Nesbitt, if acting as PM, have made any worse a job of dealing with the pandemic, the NHS, HS2 and Tory sleaze? Once his stint as PM is over he might even try his hand at wallpapering.

J T Hardy

Via email

APPEAL

Help sick children this Christmas

As 2021 draws to a close, we look forward to a long-awaited festive break with loved ones. However, our thoughts must turn to the many seriously ill children who will be spending Christmas in hospital.

Being in hospital is difficult enough for any of us, but for children, being in hospital at Christmas, a time that should be happy, full of excitement and spent with family, can be heart-breaking. However, there is a way to help. Having access to toys and fun things to do in hospital can help a child cope with the anxiety of separation and treatment, reduce the long-term emotional damage of serious illness, and bring joy back into their lives, and that’s exactly what children’s charity Starlight does.

Toys that Starlight provides can make all the difference. They can often go from being scared of tests and procedures, to looking forward to hospital appointments so that they can play with the toys and the wonderful NHS play specialists.

But sadly, this is only happening in some hospitals. This Christmas, we are urging your readers to support the charity’s Time to Play Christmas campaign, so that we can raise vital funds to ensure that all seriously ill children have the sense of escape, distraction, and joy of play in hospital, at the time they need it most.

Please visit www.starlight.org.uk/timetoplay to help us bring back joy into the lives of seriously ill children this Christmas.

Cathy Gilman

CEO, Starlight

HEALTH

Where have all the tests gone?

Testing is one way of cutting the rate of infection. Why then are we no longer able to get tests from our pharmacies?

It’s irresponsible to take away something that helps people to keep safe.

We aren’t all online and ringing 119 is useless – they are overburdened already.

Mrs P S Ogden

Address supplied

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