Cut the red tape so I can help a refugee family

I AM appalled officious bureaucrats are putting obstacles in the way of Ukrainian refugees seeking sanctuary in Britain: lengthy forms, ridiculous questions and people offering their homes being rejected for so-called health’n’safety

reasons such as having a garden pond or plug sockets that are deemed to be too low (Mail).

I registered weeks ago to host a fleeing family and have heard nothing. If I am contacted, I fully expect to be rejected because maybe I haven’t dusted this week.

When these officials sit in their warm, dry, comfy homes watching the horror in Ukraine on the nightly news, do they feel a tiny morsel of guilt? How do they sleep at night? A damn sight better than the refugees.

K. BENNETT, Fowey, Cornwall.

Useless jobsworths

WHO has the most useless job in the country? Is it the council nobodies who ban daffodils or bureaucrats in the Home Office who insist that before people can offer a home to desperate refugees they have to empty their pond?

None of these people would last a week in a proper job, yet get paid astronomical sums from public money for their incompetence.

IAN FULLER, Harrogate, N. Yorks.

Daft about daffs

I’M ASTOUNDED that a council in Cornwall is stopping the planting of ‘poisonous’ daffodils in a park in case children eat them.

We all want to protect our families, but also must teach them that certain things are not good for them. Just tell them ‘No’.

P. LANGRIDGE, Redhill, Surrey. CHILDREN might eat daffodils? They won’t even eat vegetables. DIANA HARVEY-WILLIAMS,

Sleaford, Lincs.

Petulant poseurs

HOW incredible to see petulant Russian poseurs cutting up their Chanel handbags in protest at the ban on sales of luxury goods in their country (Mail).

These pampered little princesses ought to try to walk in the shoes of a Ukrainian woman and see how much they care about their designer bags then.

J. GREEN, Burton upon Trent, Staffs. FROM charnel house to Chanel handbags. From the horrors of Ukraine to socialite influencers having a fit of pique. These ‘influencers’ are incandescent with rage because their influence has been shown to be worthless.

ANTONY DEAN, Keighley, W. Yorks.

Count women’s votes

I’M NOT singing the praises of the Prime Minister for calling for the safeguarding of women’s rights.

He is supporting this important issue only now that campaigners have made it clear they won’t vote for any politician who doesn’t stand up for women.

Perhaps an adviser pointed out that half of voters are women and he ignores them at his peril.

It’s a great pity the same adviser doesn’t also highlight only one MP represents the Green Party.

Though any backtracking on the expansion of useless wind turbines would no doubt earn Boris the wrath of Mrs Johnson. ROBERT BISHOP, Billingshurst, W. Sussex.

Forgotten care homes

THE trumpeted arrival of the Health and Social Care levy will not help. Most of the £36billion raised through the National Insurance increase for the next three years is earmarked for easing NHS backlogs due to Covid.

Unless the Government invests more of this money into social care, the sector looking after our most vulnerable will collapse. The two are interdependent so if social care goes, NHS care will go, too.

MIKE PADGHAM, Independent Care Group, York.

Rishi’s riches

MULTI-MILLIONAIRE Rishi Sunak has made a donation of more than £100,000 to...a

struggling state school? A social housing project? A food bank? A hospital? A children’s home?

No, to Winchester College, where parents pay £43,335 a year for their children to gain a life-long advantage at the expense of everyone else.

G. MATTHEWS, Lancaster.

Fly the flag

FLY the national flag of Ukraine and quite rightly this will be praised (Letters). But fly the flag of St George or the Union flag and the chattering classes will start muttering a lot of rubbish about racism and xenophobia. STEFAN BADHAM,

Portsmouth, Hants.

Parish matters

WE’VE all had fun using the ‘No authority’ comment and I happily accept it is linked to my name. I use the publicity it garners to enable me to encourage a greater diversity of people in town and parish councils.

The Zoom meeting of Handforth Parish Council that went viral did not show councillors in their best light, but did generate publicity for the sector — the lifeblood of our town and parish councils.

The impression was wrongly given that the £85,000 cost of an investigation by Cheshire East Council was into that meeting.

In fact, it was the cost of investigating the behaviour of three councillors over more than a year culminating in that meeting. Their obfuscation and unwillingness to participate drove up the costs dramatically. The 140-plus pages of the report by Cheshire East Council reviewed the investigative regime and considered how it might be streamlined.

JACKIE WEAVER, Whitchurch, Shropshire.

Turn off the telly!

WHY are people so consumed with the telly and then complain there is nothing worth watching?

Have we become a nation of armchair epicureans expecting to be entertained through a tube that feeds into our lack of capacity to think outside the box?

There are other outlets we could pursue to furnish our desire for pleasure that don’t involve soaps, quiz shows and a surfeit of culinary programmes. It’s shocking to think how much time we spend ogling a screen in our lifetime.

Now might be as good a time as any to pull the plug on it. If nothing else, it will ease the demand on the National Grid.

M. SMITH, Chatham, Kent.