Letters - April 25, 2018

Rebecca Long-Bailey, Shadow Business and Energy Secretary, put in an appearance outside the Cuadrilla site recently, where she told anti-fracking protestors that a future Labour government would ban shale gas and deliver 60 per cent of “energy” from renewables by 2030.

Total “energy” in the UK includes electricity, heat for homes and businesses, and transport – incorporating passenger cars, buses, planes and trains. Like it or not, most of that energy is supplied by fossil fuels.

The earliest we could see a Labour government would be 2020. It’s not feasible to suggest that in just 10 years, it could totally transform the UK’s energy systems to run on 60 per cent renewables.

In fact, it’s not even all that likely that we’ll be able to get 60 per cent of just our electricity from renewables, 100 per cent of the time, by 2030.

It would require not only enormous additional onshore and offshore wind capacity and much more solar, but also vast arrays of giant batteries to give us some way of storing power when it’s generated for use later (like on a freezing winter night, when the wind isn’t blowing and it’s dark).

I’m a big advocate of renewables, but I’m also a realist. Ambition is great, however, if it can’t be achieved, it risks turning people off.

The basic fact is that while we continue to build renewables and start to think about grid-scale battery storage, we’re going to carry on using a lot of gas. It’s better if that’s British gas, including from under my home on the Fylde, instead of imported gas.

Phil McVan

Independent energy consultant
Blackpool Resident

LANGUAGE

Does a missing T really ma**er?

From what I see and hear on television, the letter T is disappearing.

Quite well-known personalities on radio and TV are guilty of omi*ing the T.

It doesn’t seem to ma**er if the person has had the opportuni*y to attend universi*y.

I pity anyone from foreign parts wanting to learn the English language, only to find that things here are pronounced quite differently.

Oh!

And don’t get me going about using the letter “F” instead of “TH” as in firty-free (33). If they start a sentence with the words “I fought.....” have they been thinking or have they been in a fight?

Mrs P Wren

via email

ANIMALS

Trolls won’t stop me helping gulls

Trolls by post. I have written a few positive letters on seagulls as they had a bad press. However, recently I received a troll’s letter by post, no name and address, threatening me.

I must not write any more letters. Also they have reported two people from Cleveleys for feeding the seagulls. They will be watching me if I feed the birds will be reported, they wrote. This made me very angry, so I am going to conduct research on seagulls and gulls and have their plight raised in Parliament.

These birds are starving and all they get is a hate campaign. I grew up in olden times – people lived in dire poverty and many of us went hungry. So no official will stop me from throwing a few crumbs to hungry birds.

I also wrote recently in The Gazette how we liked shops in Cleveleys and visit regularly, but we will not be back – blame the trolls.

Snitching on your neighbours for feeding birds – what kind of society are we living in today? Us humans are being hemmed in by authority, just like the seagulls. I am off to do my research.

Pat O’Connor

Blackpool

TRANSPORT

Rail firms treat us as second class

I saw the train timetables for direct travel to London and noticed that trains from Blackpool only run from 10.53am.

What about the people who wish to have a day out in London? Blackpool people treated as second class citizens again, sort it out train companies!

Stephen Fairhurst

via email

TRADITIONS

All births are a reason for joy

The safe birth of a healthy baby is a cause for celebration everywhere.

There are about 350,000 babies born worldwide each day, although only one made the news on April 23.

It is time to celebrate all people and to remember it is not who you were born that makes you worthwhile, but what you make of your life.

The Royal family has done much with Prince Philip’s ‘Duke of Edinburgh’ awards and Prince Harry’s work with disabled soldiers with the Invictus games.

It is time to value not just the individual but all births.

Dennis Fitzgerald

via email