Letters - Thursday, February 24, 2022

I watch the news and energy I find myself saying ‘why?’

Why are you leaving out half the story? This has been going on for 50 years and we could have avoided this catastrophe.

Poor political decision followed by no action has lead us to where we are. The problem with labour is they’re there to create jobs, even if its short-termist - like Tony Benn changing us over to North Sea Gas knowing it would peek by 1999 and from that point the price would only go up.

Then Tony Blair had the chance to start us on the transition from fossil fuel... and totally failed us.

we now have to play catch up, we need to catch up 22 years in the next eight. yes, eight years left to transition, but we had 30 back then.

It’s not just Labour’s inadequacies, the Tories under Cameron favoured the private sector, leaving price to market forces, coupled with massive state handouts to the corporations.

the Tory plan is still to reward the corporations and only loan you and I £200.

Labour’s plan is also short-termist, you remove the vat, then the price goes up above the price with vat now and you’re back to square one. The wind fall tax would also have to be annual, a one-off payment wouldn’t be of use. We need to urgently invest in renewables as renewable prices are going down, fossil fuel and nuclear are going up. hydro, solar, wind and Passivhaus construction are the way forward and will lead to cheaper energy prices.

This is a country that powered its economy with hydro power for nearly 2,000 years before the industrial revolution.

We could again.

We have the technology and it could also help mitigate flooding due to climate change.

Our politicians don’t seem to have a plan.

The Tories seem to want to save the economy before saving human life, maybe they think the next step of evolution is Artificial intelligence taking over from us?

Then Labour seem to be clueless, no snippets of hope coming from their camp either.

John Warnock

Armistead estate

Fleetwood

EDUCATION

Keep political bias out of classroom

Just what is happening within our education system?

As a former primary school governor, I am quite depressed that the Education Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, has been obliged to remind teachers their role is to educate, not indoctrinate, their pupils.

He has introduced a directive to prevent teachers from indoctrinating children on politically charged topics such as BLM; the misgivings of the British Empire and the Israel Palestine conflict.

Branding Winston Churchill, a national hero, as a racist in my book is totally unacceptable.

Left wing dogma and ideology is creeping into our classrooms at the expense of actual knowledge.

A recent woke-inspired union-backed training session recommended children should stop saying ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’ and instead refer to staff as ‘teacher’ to encourage schools to be gender-free!

Four Brighton schools are replacing ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ with ‘grown-ups’ to prevent offending non traditional families.

Closer to home one school has banned meat from its canteen, asking parents to consider ‘meat free’ options in packed lunches to reduce carbon emissions.

The 3Rs has gone by the wayside but surely the focus of schools should be to concentrate on education and intellectual development of the children in their care.

There are many superb teachers who spend their working lives pushing up standards and who I suspect agree with me that political bias should be left at the school gates.

These are difficult times for our kids who are playing catch up following the Covid school closures, it is therefore important that they are taught in a balanced and factual manner, allowing them to absorb the issues and think critically.

Jim Oldcorn

Address supplied

RUSSIA

Swift sanctions are needed

What do we do about Russia? Well, the first thing we do, along with our allies, is to make sure that any sanctions we impose are swift and meaningful, unlike the episodes concerning the ‘Novichok poisonings.’

In a way, I think that maybe any sanctions we impose will be watered down due to the fact that up to 14 Tory ministers have each received donations from Russian sources and even Labour MP Barry Gardiner received £500,000 from Christine Lee, an exposed Chinese spy.

At one time you couldn’t keep Mr Gardiner off the TV stations, but since these revelations, he has disappeared off the radar.

When will these people learn that there is no such thing as a free lunch and something is expected in return?

I think that if Russia hits back with sanctions of their own then some parts of Europe, especially Germany, could be affected with regards to gas supplies but instead of listening to the loony wind farm lobby, we could have all gone nuclear and been self-sufficient by now, all those wasted years.

To finish off, there is another player in this land grab game and that’s China, which is looking closely from the sidelines and seeing what unfolds.

Their prize, if Russia gets its way, is Taiwan and any other islands in the Pacific which they could hoover up.

Mr M Tipper

Lancashire

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