Spare the ponies of Dartmoor from the burger menu
THE ladies cooking up the ponies of Dartmoor seem very pleased with themselves ( Mail). They claim that by selling burgers and sausages made from pony meat, they can save the breed from extinction and protect hundreds of foals from being culled at birth.
They say that as they are dealing with a ‘ problem’ and with a growing acceptance of different foods on the menu, why not?
Charities have been doing their best to rescue foals and ponies, and although the Dartmoor ponies are untamed, feral and live in the wild, they all still have owners. So why has no one taken the owners to task for failing to take responsibility for over-breeding?
A neutering programme is needed to ensure quality stock and sustainability.
The Dartmoor Pony Society says there is no comparison between their elitist club of purebreds and the hill ponies, and the Dartmoor pony is on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust’s endangered list. But to a family on holiday in Devon, a pony on Dartmoor and a Dartmoor pony are the same.
That their fates take different paths — one to the show ring and the other to the abbatoir — is sad. It’s such a shame that those who love the purebreds do not support the hill ponies.
This country has some of the highest welfare standards in the world for dairy, pork, sheep and poultry farmers, and these should apply to the ponies, too.
Even without considering the historic working relationship we have with these gentle creatures, who is checking their health before they enter the human food chain?
Please don’t dress up selling Dartmoor pony meat as a worthy charitable enterprise. I’ll give that burger a miss, thanks.
JUDITH ALLEN, Norwich. I WAS saddened to see that Dartmoor ponies are being turned into sausages. If the ponies are bred for meat, they will be slaughtered at three years old, but their lifespan is at least 25 years.
The breeders say they want to preserve our mountain and moorland ponies, yet they seem to value them so little, they are happy for them to end up in a sausage or burger.
MAX BURGESS, Malvern, Worcs.
Boom and bust
WAGE inflation and price inflation are spiralling out of control. The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, and his cabal of economists are using unrepresentative figures to determine interest rates.
Bonus payments are not factored into wage inflation statistics and many day-to-day price increases are also not included.
Given that it takes more than a year for the impact of higher interest rates to work through the economy, by the time these mandarins wake up, a punitive inflation rate will be having a severe impact on our economy.
Why does Britain keep lurching from boom to bust when so many ‘experts’ are in control of our economy? I am convinced the wait-and-see strategy of the Bank of England will result in another economic crisis.
Then the experts will simply walk into a big job in a private financial enterprise without facing any sanction for creating another economic mess. JAMES ROBERT-POULAIN, Bexhill-on-Sea, E. Sussex.
Bravo Dyson!
I AM surprised by the criticism of James Dyson (Letters).
What we can’t do economically here due to higher costs is to make products at a competitive price. It makes sense to have low-value parts made abroad and keep the higher-skilled jobs in this country.
Dyson has set up a skills university to train engineers to work in the UK and he pays tax here. We need more businessmen like him. JACK BUTTERWORTH, Oldham, Gtr Manchester.
Priced out
A REPORT claims young people are spending a quarter of their pay on housing costs compared with the 17 per cent their parents’ generation paid and 7 per cent their grandparents spent.
Mortgage repayments for my first house soaked up 28 per cent of my pay, about the same as the young today. But what has changed most is the increase in ‘tax’ levels on household spending. We now pay 5 per cent VAT on fuel and water bills and council tax have also risen substantially.
Did the report take entertainment into consideration as part of the cost of owning a house? All I had to pay for was a TV licence, but add the extras young people today deem a necessity, such as Sky and broadband, and you can add £100 per month. STEVE BIRDS, Bury.
Who will benefit?
WHY is there a time limit on claiming PPI? Would the banks have paid out a single penny were it not for the claims companies and law firms forcing them to?
Billions were taken from an unsuspecting public, but no bank executive has been punished.
The Professional Financial Claims Association believes there are still £ 73 billion worth of unclaimed payments and only 25 per cent of potential claims have been made. So what benefit is a time bar to anyone except those who sold PPI? MICHAEL GOLDSTONE,
Hale, Cheshire.
The name game
HOW interesting that Theresa May made representations to the Americans about the ongoing dispute between Bombardier of Canada and Boeing of America over alleged subsidies from the Canadian government. I am sure the fact that Bombardier of Belfast, which is important to the DUP and the survival of the Tory government, has nothing to do with this intervention.
GRAHAM LAST, Wigan, Lancs.
Saving up
AFTER Money Mail reported that pensioners are retiring on half the income they had a decade ago, I was furious when readers wrote in complaining that the older generation are lucky because they bought their homes at bargain prices, paid off their mortgages and have triple-locked pensions.
My husband and I married in the Sixties and were only able to put a deposit on our small house by saving up.
We rarely went out and I only bought necessities. After our marriage, we had to save for six weeks to buy a frying pan.
We didn’t have central heating and got a TV after saving for it for six months because we would not take out credit. It took us years to have a comfortable life. Youngsters these days expect it all straight away — and all on credit.
Name and address supplied.