Letters - Thursday, June 24, 2021

When digital television was introduced, we were promised one of the benefits would be that we needn’t listen to insufferable commentators because we could switch to stadium only sound.

The BBC did it for a spell with Rugby Union and, if I remember correctly, the options even included a feed from the referee.

It was excellent and informative.

This idea seems to have faded away but I beg the authorities to reintroduce it without delay.

The current Euros have demonstrated beyond doubt that, whilst some of the commentators are excellent, as are some summarisers, the majority are witless and whose self-importance is only overshadowed by their incompetence.

Do they not realise that I can see what is happening without them spelling it out in words of one syllable?

Do they not recognise the dreadful over use of “that” instead of “the” (as in the pass, the ball, the right hand side), “his”/“her” (as in his head, her hand) which normally forms the English language?

And all these people are being paid vast fees which, one way or another, come from our pockets.

Come on broadcasters, please give the general public what they want and deserve.

Richard Jackson

via email

BREXIT

Brexit just isn’t working for me

Recently my husband (who has an Irish passport) and I travelled together to the Netherlands and I experienced the full impact of not being an EU citizen.

Every Covid regulation was followed to the letter, as were the rules about travelling to the Netherlands from the UK.

Along with another UK couple, we were pulled out of the queue at border control and asked why we were travelling; our response, to visit our daughter and grandson.

Our passports were taken away.

When the border guard realised my husband was an EU citizen, he then said I could not travel with him as I needed ‘a card’.

This is incorrect.

He then said I needed proof of my marriage, which is not needed under EU rules. BUT the Netherlands, as a sovereign country, can determine whatever rules it wishes.

None of the promises made by the Leave campaign during 2016 have been fulfilled, from rights to remain in a country you may have lived in for years, fishing deals, peace in Northern Ireland and agricultural standards, to name a few.

The treatment of EU nationals under the ‘settled status’ scheme is proving inhumane.

By leaving the EU, this country has opened a Pandora’s box of the worst possible traits of humankind.

If we treat EU citizens badly at the border then this may lead to similar behaviour by our European neighbours.

Brexit certainly isn’t working for this Nana.

Jacquelyn Williams

via email

USA

Biden will leave the poor in debt

Looking at economic policy in the first three years of the Trump administration, there was a remarkable decline in wage, income and wealth inequality in the USA, reversing what happened in the preceding eight years, when all these measures had widened.

During those first three years, before Covid, real wage growth for the bottom 10 per cent of the population, at 9.8 per cent, was more than double the real wage growth of the top 10 per cent, which was 4.8 per cent.

In the same period, real wealth for the bottom 50 per cent of the population rose 28.4 per cent, while that of the top one per cent rose 8.9 per cent. The bottom 50 per cent’s share of real wealth rose, while that of the top one per cent declined. In 2019, real median household income in America rose by more $4,400, more than in any of the 16 years to 2016.

President Biden, on the other hand, will spend trillions on quantitative easing, which will end up boosting asset values of those who already own considerable wealth, while saddling ordinary people with massive future debts.

The billionaires who earn a fortune from American government contracts will rub their hands with glee, so perhaps it’s not surprising that Forbes Magazine revealed in March 2020 that 94 billionaires at that stage had contributed massive sums to Biden’s presidential campaign. Very few supported Trump.

William Rees

via email

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