Guardian angels won’t protect us after lockdown

In the coming weeks we will have to make the right decisions on how we are going to get out of lockdown.

Rhys Griffiths article on

Kent’s railway accidents (July 2) reminded me of a decision I took which changed, or possibly saved my life.

In 1957, the 5.18 pm from Charing Cross to Hayes was the train I usually took to return home from my first year at London University, sitting near the front as Hayes was a terminus.

That morning it was only slightly foggy as we approached central London but after morning lectures it had got considerably denser!

So I asked a fellow student to take notes of the afternoon lectures for me and decided to get an earlier train back to Hayes. I have often wondered how my life would have changed if I had been on my usual train, especially as I believe it was the Hayes train that ran into the steam train. Depending on what you believe, it was either fate or a guardian angel which prompted my decision to get an earlier train, as foggy days were common in the winter months in those days but in making that decision I was not considering a life-changing accident, but just the disruption to train services.

Our decision now on how to proceed after lockdown is quite different, as we know that the consequences of getting Covid-19 can be very serious, especially to older people.

So we should proceed very carefully to reduce the risk and not rely on fate or our guardian angel to protect us in the coming crucial months.

Mike Armstrong

house-buyers are looking to relocate to rural areas.

But many of these planned moves rest on the assumption that working from home will be as easy in the countryside as it is in the city. All too often, this is not the case. If the Covid19 crisis has made plain how much our economic life relies on technology and digital skills, it has also highlighted the yawning divide in connectivity between our urban and rural areas. I know people living in rural “not spots”, who try and find key areas with 4G signal to take important calls or share large documents, be that at the end of the garden or driving to the top of a hill. This divide contributes to the lower productivity in rural areas, which sits at 16% below the national average.

It’s estimated that nearly half a million rural homes have poor or slow broadband. We welcome the agreement struck between the government and mobile operators, which entails sharing the cost of phone masts as part of a £1 billion plan to end poor mobile coverage in the countryside but what matters now is delivery. The reality, as it stands, is that 4G adds £75 billion