Letters - Wednesday, May 12, 2021

The election result in the Hartlepool by-election was a kick in the teeth for all the victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster.

The Johnson Government has failed to address the issue of buildings that still have these dangerous insulation panels.

It was poor UK building regulation enforcement that allowed the panels to be installed in the first place.

There is also the issue of people that have purchased these affected flats, they will need to foot the bill to make the building safe, instead of the original developers.

There was a flat fire in London two weeks ago, which had the same cladding.

The fire spread through properties over three storeys, trapping residents on smoke-logged balconies before 125 firefighters got the blaze under control.

What will it take for action from Downing Street?

Labour’s Metro Mayors did very well in last week’s elections, gaining control of more areas, but the solution to the Grenfell Tower disaster must come from our carefree Prime Minister.

N Bywater

via email

ANIMALS

Humour by

pigeon post

I thought I might add an amusing aside to the recent articles on the merits of pigeons.

I have been assured from a reliable source that during the war, a local racing pigeon fancier was the first to cross one of his pigeons with a woodpecker.

He achieved a fantastic result. It not only delivered the message punctually, it also knocked on the door first!

Jim Oldcorn

Address supplied

ELECTIONS

Avoid appalling political policies

I am a member of the Labour Party and I regard all Conservatives in government as appalling people with appalling policies.

Every leader of the Labour Party, as far as I can remember (except Jeremy Corbyn), has adopted a policy of “we can only win elections by being decent people with appalling policies”.

Now Peter Mandelson wants to purge the party in order for it to become appalling people with appalling policies.

The recent local election results in Preston demonstrate that the opposite view must prevail.

John Prance

Address supplied

SCOTLAND

I hope Scots will not back independence

I sincerely hope the Scottish voters will not agree with an independent Scotland if they have a referendum, we’ve had a United Union since 1707!

The EU is not interested in an independent Scotland without England and Wales. An independent Scotland will not survive economically, then we’ll have an influx of Scots moving south as they have done in the past.

Jarvis Browning

via email

SCOTLAND

No wonder Scots want out of the UK!

The Brexiteers are fond of saying that the 2019 election gave an ‘unprecedented’ mandate to “Get Brexit Done”.

They base this claim on the fact that, under the ‘first past the post system’, the Tory vote share of 43.6 per cent converted into a large Parliamentary majority.

In last week’s elections to the Scottish Parliament the SNP won an overall vote share of 47.7 per cent. It is therefore complete hypocrisy for Brexiteers and Tories to claim that the SNP has no right to pursue a new independence referendum when this is higher than the Tory vote share in 2019 – which they were quite happy to use as a justification for ploughing ahead with Brexit.

It is also hypocritical for them to conveniently become temporary converts to ‘proportional representation’ and emphasise that the SNP on its own did not win an outright majority of seats.

This ignores the fact there is a pro-independence majority overall and that if the same system was used in Scotland as for Westminster elections the SNP would be sitting on a huge majority with 109 seats out of 129.

Given such appalling double standards, no wonder so many Scots want out of the UK state.

Dr O Sykes

via email