Return to the ballot box may be required
BETWEEN Theresa May’s discredited Chequers proposals and a no-deal, the MPs urging her to look at alternatives, such as a customs union, are right.
The Prime Minister has proved to be an unskilled negotiator from the start, agreeing an upfront £39 billion divorce payment.
Now she is slavishly sticking to Chequers, which she can’t sell to her own party.
The embarrassment over Jaguar Land Rover shows the Tories’ disarray. Sir Bernard Jenkin accused JLR of making up warnings, hours before the firm put 1,000 workers on a three-day week.
Sir Bernard and his Brexiteers seem happy to drive Britain off a cliff without a deal. If Mrs May fails to secure a better deal, and hers is rejected by MPs, a general election or a new referendum rightly beckons. Andy McDonald Tile Hill
Warning on taking politics for granted
AFTER reading Catch 22 many years ago, I read a number of Joseph Heller’s books, some great, some pretty heavy going.
By chance, in a charity shop a couple of weeks ago I spotted one of his books, Good as Gold. Remembered as one of the heavy ones, I thought it would be an interesting re-read and bought it.
Heller’s tale of a feuding Jewish/American family is very funny and his description of a White House run by crazy people must have been regarded as outrageous when the book was written in 1979.
But Trump’s unpredictable style of politics since entering the White House have certainly proved that Heller had a pretty good insight into what can happen when we take politics for granted. Bob Arnott Holbrooks
Number crunching with coincidences
PEOPLE are too ready to be amazed by coincidences.
In a group of 367 it is certain that at least two will have the same birthday but you only need 70 people to have a 99.9 per cent chance of at least two having the same birthday and just 23 for it to be more likely than not for two to have the same birthday.
In most football games, if you include the referee there should be two on the pitch with the same birthday. Paul Graham Nuneaton
Discount shopping event for students
SO Coventry Business Improvement District hosts the The Greatest Student Night shopping event with freebies, prizes and discounts on Wednesday, October 3. Many stores will remain open until 10pm.
Shame that regular Coventry citizens who live here and use the shops 52 weeks of the year are excluded. Perhaps we should attend so that we know which stores to avoid over the next year? Fred Foster Radford
The truth about conspiracy theories
ACCORDING to the last House of Commons briefing paper I looked at, in 2017, UK exports to the EU were £274 billion (44 per cent of all UK exports). And UK imports from the EU were £341 billion (53 per cent of all UK imports).
This, by my calculations, means that UK paid -£67 billion to the EU in than it received from it.
However, it is worth noting, purely as an aside, that in service trading it received £28 billion more than it paid out.
It’s a trade deficit and a growing one. Does this mean that the EU is taking advantage of the UK? The answer is a resounding yes. But this is not to say that R Goodfellow (Sep 26) is right with the suggestion that somehow the UK is doing the EU the favour of keeping its “little club ticking over.”
It’s yes, and if by yes you mean that the EU is exploiting the UK where it is at its most vulnerable, and that’s in apparent inability to supply manufactured goods that are competitively priced and will compete in the European marketplace. Put simply, the UK does not buy £341 billion worth of goods from the EU just because it thinks the EU is a good cause. If that’s the case, why should it expect the EU (or indeed any trading partner) to buy from it for that very reason?
Psychologist Rob Bretherton talking to The Guardian about his book Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe in Conspiracy Theories said: “We are drawn to the idea of conspiracy because it resonates with us; we understand the idea of people being self-interested and not having our best interests at heart, and having hidden motives and getting together to do shady stuff. Conspiracy theories extend upon that and tap into these assumptions and fears we have about the world. But we all have them, that’s why conspiracy theories make sense to us all.” If you believe that, as I do, you can immediately appreciate why what I now call the Goodfellow theory has got its appeal. Kevin Cryan Radford