Letters - Wednesday, 14 April, 2021

I wonder if Johnson, Hancock or perish the thought Williamson commissioned any research into the effects of our children wearing facemasks in school?

I suspect this was a merely a case of the government needing to be to seen to ‘do something’ as pressure to reopen our schools mounted.

Has any research been done on the effects on the health of pupils and wearing masks in classrooms? Surely as the weather warms up this must be done.

What effects do mandated face masks in school have on the physical health of our children and on their anxiety?

How many children are given clean masks every morning? Or in school? I was dropping my daughter off at school in Blackpool this morning when I saw a pupil pushing his bike to school. He was about 11 or 12. Whilst putting on his mask he dropped it. One of his tyres went over it, he trod on it – and then he put it on and went to class. No-one was there to guide him or advise him of the dangers of putting on a dirty contaminated mask.

Apart from the active harm this mask might inflict, has anyone actually stopped to consider the effectiveness of a dirty mask as a barrier against viral particles? Schools say they are going along with government guidance.

I would like to remind parents that masks and tests are not compulsory. Get together in online groups and fight this. I would say to any school pupils concerned about this, no one can force you to wear a mask or take a tests. Refuse, if you don’t want to. Hang your heads in shame Johnson, Hancock and Williamson.

Charles Spicer

via email

BREXIT

Johnson and Northern Ireland

For any readers of the Blackpool Gazette who may be puzzled by the fresh outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland, may I remind them of something Boris Johnson said to the Irish Parliament on July 2, 2019, shortly before he became Prime Minister?

He said, “I want to make it absolutely clear that in no circumstances, whatever happens, will I allow the EU or anyone else to create any kind of division down the Irish Sea or to attenuate our union.”

Well, Mr Johnson did not allow anyone else to do it.

He did it himself almost immediately after being elected.

John Prance

Lancashire

BREXIT

Emperor’s

new clothes

There is a deeply unpleasant nastily isolationist and jingoistic side to Brexit.

It’s unwelcoming, even xenophobic, although rarely ethnically racist.

But Brexit is about promoting division and erecting barriers so as to pursue the Emperor’s new clothes of sovereignty and independence.

How bizarre that is in an ever more interdependent world, as the development and distribution of the vaccines shows.

I am not campaigning to re-join the EU.

I would have settled for retaining membership of the Single Market like Norway.

I suspect that this is what a future independent Scotland will attain.

James Bovington

via email

SCAMS

Prosecute scammers

There has been, yet again, a sharp increase of scam calls in our area recently.

They amount to an average of four to six a day and relate to anything from Covid, Amazon Online, HMRC, bank fraud, computer problems etc...

The telephone companies need to be held responsible for allowing these calls to persist and proliferate.

The huge phone bills racked up by the scammers and paid to the phone companies is ‘dirty money!’

We should be able to claim back from the phone companies if we are defrauded.

They give us their service and phone lines, does that not make them responsible for us receiving such a high volume of these calls in the first place?

We need to clamp down and use the technology we have to stamp this out!

Along with being able to block a number, telephone preference and call blocking services should also be able to create a list of those offending, with our help as we respond.

This list could then be tracked back to those who pay the huge bills – they could then be prosecuted.

By not doing so, it means we, the consumers, are getting a raw deal.

Ann

Wyre

VIRUS

ID cards in war

I agree that virus passports may be foreign in this day and age but, during the war, everybody was issued with an identity card, children too. Mine was carried in my gas mask box which we had to carry with us, even when we went out to play.

The number on that card is now my National Insurance number.

L Macdonald

via email

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