UK Edition
Letters: The EU’s agricultural policy has driven environmental destruction
SIR – The RSPB and others (Letters, December 31) claim that a “green Brexit” depends on continued cooperation with the EU. The opposite could be argued, probably with greater evidence.
Most biodiversity loss in Europe is from the way we farm. Most EU spending is on the Common Agricultural Policy, which has contributed to unsustainable farming. The Common Agricultural Policy is “among the most powerful drivers of environmental destruction in the northern hemisphere”, as George Monbiot put it in October.
The RSPB and its fellow pressure-groups think it easier to continue with the status quo, which has failed to deliver their objectives in the past.
As the Agriculture Bill put forward by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows, Brexit offers the opportunity to improve our green landscape management.
I am saddened, as an organic farmer and conservationist, that the Soil Association, to which I have been accredited for 25 years, is a signatory of the RSPB letter, which peddles pseudo-science and misuses the political influence of the signatory organisations, and the trust the public has in them.
Nathaniel Page
Salisbury, Wiltshire
SIR – The “new chapter” that Theresa May says Britain is beginning will not come from her Brexit deal. The US ambassador confirmed that a bilateral trade deal with Britain would not be possible under Mrs May’s Brexit plan.
John Robinson
Southwell, Nottinghamshire
SIR – Half Britain’s international trade in goods is done on World Trade Organisation terms with non-EU countries, and that will rise to 100 per cent if there is no deal with the EU.
Most MPs oppose no deal, but Labour MPs in particular should be proud of their party’s role in creating the WTO. Back in 1947 a global trade deal was negotiated by 23 countries, including Britain, when Clement Attlee was prime minister and Harold Wilson was president of the Board of Trade. It was called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) and was intended to reduce high tariffs to boost international trade and prosperity.
Gatt negotiated several rounds of tariff reductions, starting 10 years before the Common Market was set up under the Treaty of Rome. Many other countries joined Gatt over the years.
In 1973 Britain’s voting rights on Gatt were taken over by the Common Market. In 1994 Gatt was renamed the WTO.
So when Britain leaves the EU, it will be picking up where it left off and carrying on the good work started by Attlee and Wilson. There is no such thing as “no deal”, just the deal negotiated by the Labour government more than 70 years ago and it is one that has stood the test of time.
Christopher Sharratt
South Wonston, Hampshire
Opera heroines
SIR – The Royal Opera House wants to make opera less misogynistic (Letters, December 29), but most of the violence and unpleasantness in staged opera owes a great deal less to the composer than to the director or producer.
Most operatic females are actually excellent characters in their own right. Wotan’s plans in the Ring cycle are brought to nothing, and the gods are destroyed, mostly because of the sheer strength of character of his wife and daughter.
Don Giovanni’s wronged ladies eventually gang up on him and happily see him off to hell (with very little help from the extremely wimpy tenor).
Tosca actually kills her abuser; and where would we be without Minnie in La fanciulla del West, the ladies in Falstaff or the Countess and Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro?
Sally Gibbons
London SW19
Wedding with a will
SIR – You report that deathbed weddings are becoming more common.
It should be remembered that marriage renders a will void. Savings in inheritance tax from a last-minute wedding can be eaten away by legal fees in trying to sort out the mess.
Anyone contemplating a deathbed wedding should ensure that new wills are made immediately afterwards.
Richard Peart
Barnet, Hertfordshire
Half-dressed animals
SIR – Why do the meerkats in the television advertisements wear a top covering (jacket, jumper, T-shirt) but leave their nether regions uncovered?
Pat Blenkinsopp
Winterbourne Dauntsey, Wiltshire
Channel lifeboats
SIR – I find the sight of highly acclaimed RNLI vessels acting as unpaid Border Force patrol boats distressing.
Not only are volunteer seamen being put into dangerous situations, but they are operating in the front line of a situation that has no precedent in UK waters.
There are internationally recognised laws and protocols in place for crossing shipping lanes, all of which are being ignored by migrants’ boats. The French authorities must stop this wholesale abuse of the laws of the sea, which are in place to prevent accidents and loss of life.
This is not a situation that I foresaw when raising funds for the RNLI, whose people give their time freely, in expensive, well-equipped vessels that are funded solely by public donations.
Hugh Thompson
Sittingbourne, Kent
SIR – A total of five Border Force cutters to police our shores seems woefully inadequate, even if they were all available. Sajid Javid would do the people of Appledore and surroundings a big favour if he were to resurrect the shipyard to build a few more.
Vaughan Matthews
Monmouth
Golfers anonymous
SIR – I have just received my new golf-club diary. It no longer contains details of members and their phone numbers. This renders it pretty useless.
It seems that new data legislation takes a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Members of such an organisation have no objection to providing contact details so that they can be reached by other members to arrange participation in club competitions.
Roger Howard
Bishops Waltham, Hampshire
Beans talk
SIR – Martin Brown (Letters, December 31) found an avocado much improved after 25 days in the fridge. We have just had a sorer experience. Returning from a week away over Christmas, we found that a power cut had left the house without electricity for several days.
Losing a salmon in the freezer that was meant for New Year’s Day wasn’t so bad. What hurt were the 25 bags of broad beans I had lovingly sown, nurtured, harvested and frozen, which had to be dumped in the bin.
Peter Gardner
Hydestile, Surrey
Tea: no milk, no sugar
SIR – Reading Janet Kay’s letter (January 1) asking how to make a decent cup of tea without cow’s milk, I almost choked with disbelief on my black, flavoursome and sugarless loose-leaf tea.
Richard Preece
Caldy, Wirral
SIR – For a cup of tea without milk, use a couple of mint leaves instead.
Tony Geeves
Bracknell, Berkshire
SIR – Earl Grey.
Brian Meharg
Liverpool
SIR – Try a dash of unsweetened soya milk. The result tastes very similar to semi-skimmed milk to me, and it’s readily available.
Failing that, green tea can be delicious.
Ian Noble
Chandlers Ford, Hampshire
SIR – I would recommend cashew milk for Janet Kay’s cuppa. She will find the taste most acceptable.
However, she will have to deal with the sludge left at the bottom of the cup.
Adriana Place
St Ouen, Jersey
The grandeur that was Cromer
SIR – Kennedy’s (Letters, December 31) was not the only textbook whose title was amended by imaginative readers.
Generations of pupils at my school altered Kathleen Gadd’s From Ur to Rome to become From Bury to Cromer – a sort of gazetteer for East Anglia.
Richard Dade
Peterborough
SIR – Our primer, when I was nine, was Latin with Laughter, which was soon adjusted to Eating with Slaughter.
Rev Canon Timothy Watson
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – Our Latin primers were Mentor and Civis Romanus, which became Tormentor and, in those happy Fifties days, Elvis Romanus.
Michael Round
London SW19
SIR – Geography was enlivened by The Comparative Atlas becoming Ethel, a Comparatively Fat Lass.
Jane Byrne
Stone, Staffordshire
SIR – All I retain after 50 years is repeating at increasing speed the imperatives: dic, duc, fac, fer to the rhythm of a train picking up speed on leaving Victoria. It was enough, it seems, to guarantee me a place at Cambridge.
Jeremy Burton
Wokingham, Berkshire
SIR – My grandmother was mortally offended when my mother came home from school with a textbook entitled Latin for the Lower Middle Class.
Judy Sutherland
Altrincham, Cheshire