LETTERS

Brexit betrayed

HARD Brexit, soft Brexit, I’ve listened to the political elite, watched the business tycoons, read the editorials, and now we see the negotiations — and all I see is a gooey Brexit, full of compromise and stitch-ups.

What we voted for seems to have been lost amid political spin. We wanted control of our borders, foreign criminals deported, a halt to unrestricted immigration, and our sovereignty back, plus the right to make free trade deals.

Yet it seems, one by one, what we voted for is being eroded into a mushy mish-mash of patched-up comprises, and a Brexit that will betray the trust of the British people and bring mockery to the whole democratic process.

S.T. Vaughan, Yardley Wood, Birmingham.

Grenfell blame game

NOW the police have said there won’t be prosecutions of people caught in the Grenfell fire who were there on an illegal basis — such as a fraudulent sub-let — we must ask if their status had any bearing on the alleged poor response by the local council?

It does not take too much brain power to imagine there may have been considerable reluctance by some of these people to provide the authorities with accurate personal details. We cannot expect the BBC to take this matter up as they prefer to adopt an anti-Tory stance.

Officials may be wrongly targeted and hung out to dry, merely because this is a taboo subject within a major disaster. You can’t help people who will not admit to living there, or if there are no records of who was.

If the official inquiry reveals lack of co-operation by residents — and that several prominent Labour supporters used the tragedy to stir up antiTory feeling — then it is to be hoped that they apologise.

CLIVE NELSON-SINGER,

Beare green, Surrey.

Towering prejudice

I EXPECTED better of David Lammy Mp, who called for the judge appointed to head the Grenfell Tower inquiry to be sacked because he was a ‘white uppermiddle class man’.

If I said that I did not want someone doing an investigation, because the person was a ‘ black man’ or ‘black woman’, he would be jumping up and down with anger. And, no doubt, the Labour party (which I used to support) would join in.

Still, it does prove that prejudice is not just a white disease but comes in all shades of creeds and colour.

WENDY FREEMAN, Plymouth.

The Countess’s war

I WAS saddened at the death of Countess Mountbatten (Mail).

I had hoped mention would be made that she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the war. My sister and I were both in the Wrens, and my sister was very proud to have shared a cabin with her while serving in Ceylon.

PAMELA BULLWANT, Fallowfield, manchester.

Abortion rethink is wrong

FOLLOWING the discussion of further loosening the abortion law (Mail), I have a question.

If the unborn human could think for himself, would his last thought be: ‘What the hell happened to the Hippocratic Oath?’ and ‘First, do no harm?’

What have we become? practices are being advocated which a few decades ago were rightfully considered an abomination.

V. BEGGS, KENDAL, Cumbria.

Foreign aid and fat cats

RECENTLY, we had both the Mansion House speech by Chancel- lor, philip Hammond and the Queen’s Speech. Neither mentioned the ‘elephant in the room’ — namely the blatant annual squandering of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on so- called foreign aid to countries with space programmes and/or nuclear weapons and to lands where governments misuse it by sponsoring terrorism and buying private jets, luxury limousines, mansions, etc.

Nor was there mention of the ‘dinosaur in the room’ — namely the colossal amount of tax avoidance by super-rich organisations and individuals that costs the British exchequer up to £ 100 billion each year.

In a gradually ageing society, the National (not international) Health Service, adult social care, and state retirement pension are all inextricably linked.

All three could be easily funded in Britain, the world’s fifth largest economy, if the two scandals mentioned above were dealt with.

IAN CAMPBELL, West Park, hartlepool.

Work, or no welfare

NOW let me see if I have got this right. We are informed that to keep our economy on an even keel we need to admit thousands of mainly unskilled migrants to service our labour-intensive industries.

At the same time, and at the last count, we have well over a million of our own unemployed.

But it seems the latter disdain the work on offer and would much prefer to get paid for doing nothing, courtesy of the taxpayer.

Now I know I’m being naïve, but has nobody thought of imposing a system whereby if you refuse to work — let us be generous and say if you twice refuse — you forfeit any right to welfare payments?

J. HOWARD, Blackburn, lancs.

Shame of All Blacks

THE All Blacks’ Sonny Bill Williams thoroughly deserved to be sent off for his dangerous and reckless shoulder charge on Lions winger Anthony Watson. Sonny Bill deserved to have a four-week ban imposed on him.

My old admiration of the All Blacks has plummeted to zero. I had always thought they were the guardians of the spirit of rugby union, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The fact is the All Blacks are all about playing dirty and plain dumb physical brutality; they are not the guardians of the magic of rugby union. They have brutalised the game, and rugby is the worse for it.

Sonny Bill should stick to boxing. Bashing people in vulnerable positions is about the only talent he has going for him.

KARIM HYDE-SMITH,

address supplied.

Cable picks wrong battle

WITH all the problems in the world, we now have Vince Cable, who is poised to become the leader of the Liberal Democrats, worrying about picking strawberries.

My God, where do they get these people from? According to him, without staying in the EU we won’t have enough immigrants to pick our fruit.

He’s not bothered about the irreparable damage done to all manner of things caused by the massive influx of cheap labour into this country in such a short time, such as the immense strain on the NHS, housing and schooling.

No, just whether the punters will get their punnet of strawberries at Wimbledon.

Well Mr Cable I’m almost as old as you, and in all of my life I can’t remember ever walking into a shop and seeing the shelves empty.

I know that just a few years before I was born, during the war years, people hadn’t seen a banana for years, but that has not happened during the past 60 years, in the EU or out of it. I go regularly to farms to pick my own, living close to the

garden of england, as i do, and there’s nothing to compare with British varieties.

So Vince, instead of worrying about a shortage that doesn’t exist, start thinking about why many people voted to leave the EU.

Here’s a clue: it had nothing to do with fruit and veg.

TERENCE MURPHY,

London Se3.

IS Vince cable proud to have been part of a government that created our dependency on labour from abroad to pick our strawberries for us?

does he realise that if we continue to build on the green belt to house Britain’s everexpanding population, there soon won’t be anywhere left to grow strawberries?

NICK FELT GOOD,

Didcot, Oxon.

Police social media

GUY ADAMS on the problem with so- called ‘social media’ (Mail) puts his finger on the root of the problem — namely the absence of any kind of meaningful oversight or accountability.

The providers repeatedly stand back and disclaim responsibility for content which is anti-social, obscene, libellous or seditious. Service providers use the same defence as those who set up the first printing presses in the mid-15th century, namely that they only provide the technology and have no responsibility at all for the content.

if you want to know how to spread a libel, make a bomb or murder your grandmother, there is a website for you. as with the history of printing, it will soon be clear that this cannot continue.

Traditional media, such as print, radio and TV, accepted long ago that they must behave as gatekeepers to content. Without similar controls, social media (a terrible misnomer) has become a cultural disease.

DR CLIVE ASHWIN,

Aylsham, Norfolk.