Letters - Thursday January 7 2021

Members of the unelected House of Lords guzzled hundreds of bottles of luxury booze in 2020 despite not being in work for most of the year.

Bars and restaurants serving Parliament’s upper chamber sold a total of 214 bottles of champagne and prosecco this year.

Figures, revealed under the freedom of information act, show that the Westminster venues sold 61 bottles of their own brand of champagne priced at £50.

The shutdown of the Lords between March and July meant that excluding weekends and public holidays members sat for a maximum 113 days.

Earlier this year, whingeing Lords requested a hardship fund to help during the covid-19 crisis after their daily allowance paid merely for turning up to work was cut by £162.

Is it not time for the upper house to be abolished? the fact is the Lords, who nobody voted for, have been living the life of Riley at taxpayers’ expense, while at the same time pleading poverty and begging for a hardship fund. Voters must be sick. The Westminster system isn’t fit for purpose. It’s time to pull the breaks on this gravy train and abolish the Lords for good.

Royston Jones

Anchorsholme

Weapons

Celebrate this abolition treaty

Government websites tell us that “the UK must – and does – act in accordance with the rule of international law”.

Strange then that the same Government remains hell-bent on ignoring the United Nations Treaty on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons which will come into force on Friday, January 22, 2021.

From that date, with support from the overwhelming majority of countries in the world, the Treaty will define all nuclear weapons as prohibited weapons of mass destruction, just like chemical and biological weapons.

This is surely a crucial issue, not only for the whole world, but also for our local communities.

The time is long overdue for the skills of workers at BAE Systems to be redirected to socially useful purposes, rather than being squandered on building components for the Trident nuclear weapons system.

It is time that our local authorities took action to stop nuclear warheads from being carried along our local roads and motorways.

And it is time that our local MPs put pressure on the Government to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

We need to celebrate the coming into force of the Treaty on the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons on January 22 and there are plenty of ways to do so.

For example, all our local authorities, religious leaders, local councillors and others could respond positively to the invitation by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) to pledge their support for the Treaty.

In doing so they would be both recognising the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons and calling on the Government to sign the Treaty.

Philip Gilligan

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

Vius

Cancer death but Covid on certificate

A very good friend of mine died on Christmas Day. He was in his late 70s.

Up until the second week of December he’d been in fine fettle. No previous history of illness whatsoever. From one day to the next he suddenly lost all strength to the point where he couldn’t get out of bed unaided.

He was taken into hospital and within a couple of days was diagnosed with stage 3 pancreatic cancer and given a matter of days to live.

During his two-week spell in hospital he was tested four times for Covid-19. Each time negative with the last test being done on 23 December. He was sent home on Christmas Eve to basically die.

What went on the death certificate ? You’ve guessed it.

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to know that this is not only fundamentally wrong and a disgusting lie but has been happening as a matter of routine since March. I have three other friends who have all succumbed to terminal cancer since then and all had the same cause of death, ie, Covid-19, put on their certificate. This is happening nationwide judging by the amount of people saying exactly the same thing.

This is not incorrect, misleading or ‘dangerous’ information. It is the truth. Problem is people can’t handle the truth can they ?

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED