Letters - Thursday, October 14, 2021

Re: Boris Johnson’s flippant and dismissive remarks about farmers having to cull 120,000 pigs.

Johnson cruelly quipped that a cull does not matter as pigs are bred to be slaughtered and are destined only for bacon butties.

This cull is not for animal or human health reasons, but a direct result of the shortage of abattoir vets, slaughterers, and butchers.

As 90 per cent of abattoir vets and 25 per cent of meat processors were EU citizens, this deficit was a clearly predictable result of Johnson’s hard Brexit and something for which successive Conservative governments should have planned.

Farmers will be put in the appalling position of having to kill their healthy livestock – probably by shooting – and disposing of the bodies on their farms.

Quite apart from the acute distress caused, this is a shocking waste of food at a time when poverty and use of foodbanks is growing apace. Farmers will have to face huge losses through no fault of their own.

Our British farmers work extremely hard to keep food on our tables and Johnson’s mockery of their efforts beggars belief.

Tony McCobb

via email

FINANCES

A fairer solution for society

This Government has had to borrow billions in recent months which will have to be repaid, but it has given us no indication of how it will do so, except for a small increase in NI contributions.

This will clearly not be sufficient and will have the greatest impact on the less well-off in our society.

I would like to propose a fairer solution.

In Japan, senior executives earn 60 times the average earnings of their workforce. This multiple is long-standing.

In the UK the multiple is 200 times; in the USA, 250 times.

Such excesses could be described as immoral and have already received strong objections from shareholders, both large and small.

Rather than an outright ban:

1. Tax any excess over 60 times at 50 per cent.

2. Advise all staff and shareholders.

3. Place prominent advertising in newspapers and on social media.

I am sure Rishi Sunak will object, but has he any viable alternative?

I believe the public would appreciate the fairness of this solution.

The political effect would be positive.

Andrew Pearson

Via email

ENVIRONMENT

We’ll all pay for climate change

Dick Lindley asks if the “hysterical eco warriors” are prepared to bear the increased costs of energy if we do not change our ways (Your Say, October 10). Climate change is a long and well-established scientific fact, not some mindless myth promulgated on social media.

It does not give us the option of waving a wallet and jumping to the front of some temperate queue. Neither can we go skipping across to some off-shore, tax and heat-dodging haven.

One way or another, we all pay – our children and grandchildren most of all.

We really are “all in this together” – even David Cameron, Boris Johnson and co!

ME Wright

Address supplied

ENERGY

This green tax is simply immoral

The Government has been warned that its proposals to put green taxes on gas bills will push hundreds of thousands into fuel poverty at a time when energy bills are soaring.

The proposed tax on home heating will produce yet another public health crisis as it will impact the poor, the elderly and the vulnerable who already have difficulty keeping their homes warm.

Loading Net Zero costs onto domestic gas supplies, the source of warmth for over 90 per cent of the UK’s 26 million households, is simply immoral.

This malign tax is one of the worst energy policy ideas since the Millennium – which is saying a very great deal indeed – and will drive up “excess winter deaths” to near pandemic levels.

Dr John Cameron

via email

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