Money no excuse for game bird shooting Self-sufficiency for 2021 a national goal

WILLIAM Baker gave a lengthy account of the advantages to woodland habitat and the economy in order to defend the shooting of pheasants (September 18).

IT seems that most of the Chancellor’s so-called “viable jobs” are in industries providing personal pleasure to their customers with very little residual value, a high proportion of which are concentrated in London and South East England.

I hope, next year, when we no longer have to obey EU rules, public money will be available to start the next generation of industries providing products that are essential for the coming “Green Revolution,” such as a range of electric motors for cars, vans, lorries, trucks, tractors and boats, with their controls, whether they are powered by batteries or hydrogen fuel cells. I am particularly interested in the aluminium battery, I first learned about in the Western Morning News.

New or refurbished factories should be mainly in North East England, especially if there is no last-minute agreement with the

European Union, which is in the habit of dragging out negotiations to the very last minute, to tease its victims like a cat playing with a mouse it is going to eat.

There should also be help to start new fishmonger shops in every town to distribute very fresh fish, replacing those that were driven out of business by the EEC.

Help to buy inshore fishing boats would also be a good idea to reduce “fish-miles” to an absolute minimum. We might also want to build insulated greenhouses to grow hydroponic tomatoes, all year round, roofed with solar panels powering efficient LEDs delivering light of exactly the right wave-length.

National self-sufficiency should be the order of the year, 2021, and a lot less trying to copy the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

If we have to holiday abroad, let us fly in modern versions of the Bristol Britannia and the Vickers Viscount, both turbo-prop driven, flying low enough for their exhaust gases to be converted back into oxygen and water vapour by photosynthetic plants.

Tony Maskell Newton Ferrers, Devon