Weekend: Letters to the editor

How to get Letters to the Editor published: Keep it short and sweet – don’t wander off from the point you wish to make, get your facts straight as you see them and most of all try to make us laugh or cry or both! From there, it’s down to the editor.

 

Sir/madam

I often read articles concerning the advantages of electric cars. I don’t get it at all. Where does the power come from? Not just to drive them but to make them. It can’t be just from wind or solar can it? And all those rare earth metals being dug up from deep mines for batteries, leather seats from cows and charging stations dotted all over the country – what are they made of? And when they were made was it through solar-powered JCB diggers and state of the art factories made of reused cardboard and recycled plastic milk bottles? And when they ship the cars across the sea in massive container ships – are they powered by bovine deposits or biomass? I don’t think so.

I have a sneaky suspicion we are all being sold another lie just like they did with Diesel cars. They want us to replace everything to keep the manufacturers going, don’t they? Electric cars still pollute don’t they – it’s just that we can’t see the smoke. But it’s still there, isn’t it?

Kenneth Hart – Cornwall

 

Dear Sir

So, now there’s a strong possibility of a general election just before Christmas…

Whilst some debate the possibility of a Labour election win with the present leadership (Guardian letters, 27^th October) no-one is waking up to the fact that plans are already in place to limit the possibility of any genuine general election result, or the possibility of a future UK Labour Party government.

Government legislation requires anyone who wishes to vote to register online for voting, which guarantees that a third of the adult population are incapable of registering because they don’t use IT, have no idea how to register online and so no doubt will not be using their votes.  The third of the adult population who do not use IT are predominantly the very elderly and the older working-class population, who have no need for IT in their lives. Yet, perhaps, these are the voters who need to cast a vote to increase the possibility of a future UK Labour Party government, which has been missing from the UK for the past 40 years. New Labour were a law unto themselves.

Apathy often demonstrates flawed so-called general elections. Apathy means vast numbers of working people don’t vote, claiming their vote doesn’t count. At the last general election the Conservative government were elected with a low turnout at the polls, and it is this apathy which guarantees that the UK faces the strong possibility of another Conservative government when the UK does go to the polls again.

If more of the adult population in the UK don’t register to vote, and then actually use their vote on polling day, then any general election will again be dominated by the usual £multi-million Conservative campaigns, which promise anything to gain a win, as their many false claims become evident only after they are back in at No 10.

Mo Stewart – Disabled War Pensioner, Wisbech

 

Sir

I was born in the middle of 1947. Then the human population was about 2.4 billion people, today it is about 7.7 billion people. This is well over 300 per cent in something like seventy years or so.

According to the American Population Reference Bureau, there have been about 107 billion people born since 8,000 B.C.

From my £2.99 Argos 2003 solar-powered calculator – that means 7.2 per cent of the people that have ever been born to humans are, in fact, alive right now. If we triple that again in seventy years, it goes without saying that the same increase would mean planet earth being a bit crowded. As Earth has not expanded to accommodate this over-crowding, I’m pretty sure me and my trusty calculator have worked out we are more or less doomed – assuming I make it to 140 years old of course!

Dave Bignall – Nottingham

 

Dear Sir/madam

How is this election taking back control? Given that Cameron was completely clueless and Theresa May no better – why does anyone think a political extremist suffering from delusions of grandeur in the round shape of BJ should be rewarded with anything but the sack? You know what’s going to happen here don’t you – it’ll be a hung parliament. Johnson will get thrown out (hopefully – of the country), the Tories will implode, (we can only dream), Corbyn will join forces with anyone willing to form a government (who will tax the life out of everything not bolted to the floor), then the whole thing will be reversed by this time next year. Oh – and just as the Irish start hiding their guns in garden sheds again – and it all settles down – the Scots will want to leave us, re-join the EU and a border wall will appear ten miles north of Carlyle. With that half of England’s landmass and that recent massive oil find makes them rich and us lot in England poor. It’s like some sort of 1970s comedy – Carry on Brexit.

Peter Longhorn – Worcester

 

 

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