Letters - Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Two severe crises at the same time
See letter from Dr Barry ClaytonSee letter from Dr Barry Clayton
See letter from Dr Barry Clayton

Covid-19 has hit this country and the world like a massive tsunami. Our economy has been rocked to its foundations.

All governments are facing a Sisyphean task with very limited knowledge. Attempts to resolve the crisis are having to adopt desperate measures knowing they are tentative and may well fail.

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It is therefore extremely unfortunate that this country is having to tackle another severe crisis at the same time. Its name is Brexit.

Leaving the EU, with or without a deal, was always going to send shock waves through our economy but leaving during a major killer pandemic makes for unforseen and incalculable problems.

One earnestly hopes the Herculean task ahead will not prove to be beyond the ability of those who govern us.

Dr Barry Clayton

Thornton Cleveleys

Europe

United Ireland getting closer

The threat posed by the Brexit negotiations to the Union of Northern Ireland with Great Britain may be viewed with greater equanimity by some of us than others.

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An independent united Ireland can be seen as a natural outcome which has been delayed for over a century by the antics of the IRA, going back to a time when peaceful transition was within reach. There is reason to feel that reconciliation is again plausible, the Irish people having in recent decades liberated themselves from the Catholic Church.

The EU needs, however, to be aware that if it forces such an outcome then its cohesion fund will be taking on responsibility for maintaining the north of Ireland at a level of prosperity sufficient to stupefy any resulting dissent.

In the longer term, such developments might conceivably take us towards a Federation of the British Isles.

JG Riseley

address supplied

Politics

There are two sets of rules

Very few people emerge from a public school education without having acquired a sense of entitlement.

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This means that they expect to be respected, indulged and rewarded for nothing very much.

Boris Johnson (pictured) is such a person. He provided a particularly glaring demonstration of this during Prime Minister’s Question Time on September 16.

The Labour MP Catherine McKinnell asked him that if he thought that, if it was all right for his government to break the law “in limited and specific ways”, why should ordinary members of the public not do so?

Mr Johnson did not reply because the only possible answer is that he thinks that there is one law for himself (and his cronies) and another for everyone else.

John Prance

address supplied

Europe

The European Union can do good

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Where has all the vilification of the EU come from? Is it just from all the ‘lies’ which fall from the lips of members of the UK government?

Brexit was sold on a pack of lies, which many of our citizens have now realised. Britain ceased to be great a long time ago and most people who voted Leave will not be alive to see it great again.

I am not proud of saying this.

How long do you think it will take us to build back our industries, many of which failed because of cheap imports from the Far East for one?

We may be an island but we are still part of the continent of Europe. Many good things have come to us from them, our closest neighbours.

Get real peeps.

Kath Telford

via email