Happy to stand alone because we know best...
EVERYTHING had gone swimmingly for Boris Johnson until the early part of the year.
His years of misinformation as a journalist had peaked with his Brexit campaign and his success at persuading large numbers of Labour voters to change sides following his promise of a golden future if we took back control and severed our links with the EU.
Backed by a stunning Parliamentary majority our new PM was fireproof, or so he thought, until Covid19 struck.
It took him a little while to realise that something was seriously amiss and that drastic measures would have to be taken to deal with it.
In the meantime the virus gained pace and he was too late to take advantage of the experiences of the countries of continental Europe which would have reduced Britain’s death toll.
And why was this? It was because we’re British.
Mr Johnson had spent so long pointing out the disadvantages, as he saw them, of belonging to the EU and the advantages of “going it alone” that he quite failed to notice that since the days of the Blitz we had dismantled great swathes of our manufacturing industry, recklessly sold off many iconic firms and industries to foreign investors and put our faith into our burgeoning financial sector quite overlooking the fact that this is the industry most easily re-located to other parts of the world.
Now as we enter the worst recession for generations, stricken by the pandemic, with a massive and everincreasing gap between the incomes of the rich and the poor we face an uncertain future, and why?
It’s because we’re British - we couldn’t possibly learn from foreigners.
At a time when we need friends and allies more than ever before, with climate change going to affect our everyday lives, we stand alone, and why? It’s because we’re British, and we know best.
Rod Slater, Warrington
We need to be told truth
I READ with interest the continuing concerns over ‘increases’ in positive test results across parts of Greater Manchester.
The problem is that neither the reader nor the writer, apparently, knows who is being tested and if those test results are representative of what is happening in the wider population.
What appears to be the case is that volunteers turning up at testing stations are presenting higher numbers of positive test results than previous cohorts.
If reports of testing are confined to volunteers then the results cannot be representative of the community at large and will be biased towards those presenting symptoms.
The only way to know if the rate of infection in the general public is changing, is to test the general public.
Samples of, say, a 1,000 selected at random every week would provide a true indication.
Why is this strategy not being adopted... or is it, and the M.E.N. is not telling us, or is not being told? Either way, this can lead to misleading information and the M.E.N. as our guardian must, restrict its reporting to facts that represent the full picture and not err on the sensational.
The public needs to know the truth.
Terry Dean, address supplied
Excuses when facts don’t fit
I’D like to thank Adam Peirce from Manchester Climate Emergency for replying to my question of why temperatures went down between 1940 and 1970 when CO2 levels rose and now we are finally getting somewhere, and what a U-turn it is (Viewpoints, August 13).
So it’s no longer CO2 to blame... now it’s aerosols fault! Talk about making excuses when the facts don’t fit.
To make matters worse his claims are nonsense. The most potent aerosol emitted for blanketing the atmosphere is sulphur dioxide which is now higher than between 1940 to 1970 because of the expansion of coal powered power plants and the massive industrialisation in China and India.
So if aerosols were to blame it would be cooler now.
As for politicians endorsing climate hysteria, well, just look at their handling of Covid-19.
John Douglas, Manchester
Climate fears to raise taxes
I’VE been following the debate in Viewpoints between John Douglas and Manchester Climate Emergency with interest.
What’s fascinating is how many times Manchester Climate Emergency has changed its mind while Mr Douglas hasn’t changed his argument once.
I never realised that CO2 levels have gone up and temperatures have dropped before, it’s certainly not something governments have admitted too and it’s worrying if they are selling unfounded climate catastrophes to us to raise taxes.
MCE clearly said that CO2 increases always cause warming then when shown otherwise blamed it on aerosols. They’re unconvincing.
I wonder if we’ll see consensus arguments next which are controversial.
Brian Davies, Horwich