Soap gift can protect lives Brexiteers jumping ship

THE start of vaccination for Covid19 is welcome, but as the advert says, we still need to keep washing our hands to defeat the virus. This is a reality utterly ignored by the vast majority of shoppers (and many shops) in Manchester.

We cannot regard this as ‘the beginning of the end’, no matter how Churchillian some may like to sound. Thousands will still be infected and die. How many thousands depends on the extent to which we all keep our guard up. I’m not sure if I have contempt or just pity for conspiracy theorists and flat-earthers who protest against being asked to wear masks. Perhaps it won’t be their granny dying. Or perhaps it will.

Already we see concerns being raised about people being left behind. Steve Scown raised the issue of people with learning disabilities and their support staff (Viewpoints, December 9) and the fragility of the Pfizer’s wonder drug means that to use it economically priorities may be bent until such times as smaller packs can be made up. These are real concerns.

It must be a nightmare getting the frozen product securely from factories abroad into the UK, around the country at -70 degrees and then preserving it at such temperatures.

To get it to nursing home residents it will mean divvying it up into usable packs and processing it for delivery, and then getting a health professional to the patient with the medicine still potent.

As ever people look for a hightech solution when the frequent and efficient use of good old soap would do so much more cost effectively. That’s why I support Christian Aid’s appeal to promote soap production in Africa – it gives work to women, promoting independence and selfsufficiency, and it fights infection.

If you are stumped for a present for a loved one this Christmas, sending them this as a charity gift would also help a woman and her family escape poverty whilst protecting lives.

I read yesterday that Britain’s richest man and prominent Brexiteer Jim Ratcliffe (who lives in Monaco) has decided to open his new car plant in France instead of Wales, also another British pro-Brexit billionaire James Dyson manufacturers most of his products in Malaysia.

Both of these people were very vocal in support of Britain leaving the EU yet both of them have decided that there interests are better served outside of the UK.

In addition the oven ready deal promised by Boris earlier this year appears to have come out of the oven as a dead duck, we are on the verge of deploying the Royal Navy against our nearest neighbours and allies.

Tony Cooper, Blackley