Letters - Wednesday January 13 2021

Briefly the virus has been sidelined in the headlines by the appalling events in the USA where a defeated candidate (President Trump) has refused to accept the results of a democratic election.

He has compounded this by tacitly or otherwise encouraging his supporters to put pressure on democratically elected Senators and Representatives to overturn the result.

Aside from the appalling violence, however, the events of the last four years in the UK have been remarkably similar.

Several politicians and three parties (Liberal Democrats, Greens and SNP) refused to accept the result of the 2016 Brexit Referendum.

Most of 2019 saw attempts to paralyse Parliament by elected members from all parties determined to overturn the will of the people.

The Scottish National(ists) have some vestige of justification but the Liberal Democrats had and have no such excuse.

For them to criticise Trump is verging on hypocritical.

Neil

via email

Virus

Tories the cause of our problems

I am getting sick of Tory MPs like the utterly inept Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock trying to blame the public for the spike in Covid-19 cases and saying it is those people who are causing the crisis in the NHS.

The crisis is entirely on your watches, May, Hunt, Hancock, Johnson, and also Cameron/Osborne.

Since Cameron/Osborne started all the cuts, there have been 10 years of austerity and 200,000 nurses have left the profession.

More leave every month than are being employed but Johnson and Hancock never mention that when they bluster about the (alleged) 13,000 “new” nurses.

Next the police.

They’re to blame because they’re not being stringent enough.

You can’t win.

The problems we are ALL experiencing are because of useless Tory MPs.

R Kimble

via email

Politics

Democracy is so 2019

How proud we must feel that our MP, Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, can now decide to pass or reject a law.

I have read that “MPs might not actually vote, the Speaker or Deputy Speaker can determine that there is enough support to pass regulations without a vote”.

Surely this makes him the most powerful man in the country?

But given that there is no difference in opinion between the parties, the right choice is to side with the Government.

It has been suggested that local elections in May will have to be ‘delayed’.

But voting and democracy are so 2019. We need to welcome this new era where MPs decide what is safe for us all, how much fresh air is the acceptable amount, and when we can leave our own cells, sorry homes...

S H

via email

HS2

Land could be used for trees

The high speed rail minister, Andrew Stephenson, reported to the Commons Transport Committee, saying that the ‘estimated’ cost of phase one of the HS2 project has already been spent or contracted.

If it was scrapped tomorrow, he doesn’t know how much can be recovered – not least because of the compulsory purchase of family homes.

The large areas of land purchased could be used for creation of woodlands to go towards meeting the Government’s target of planting 30 million trees. This would benefit wildlife and could generate an income in timber production as well as replacing the veteran trees that have been felled for this project.

Dave Ellis

via email

Politics

The organ grinder not the monkey

Much as I commend regular and forthright criticism of the goon currently in charge of education in England, might I suggest people direct their ire instead at the goon-in-chief, the organ-grinder rather than the monkey?

I refer to the deeply peculiar squatter in 10 Downing Street but I cannot bear to type his name.

Gareth Robson

via email