In his article (Do stronger borders ever work?, 26 April) Richard Collett refers to the Irish border cleaving communities and even farmhouses in two. Spike Milligan picked up on this in Puckoon, where the border went through the public house of the eponymous village, such that two feet of the bar was in Northern Ireland and the remainder was in the Irish Free State.
The locals quickly realised that beer would be cheaper in the Northern Ireland portion, due to more lenient taxation, with the result that they all attempted to crowd into the two feet of bar “in the North”, much to the disgust of the publican. A rare instance of a border bringing people closer together.
Phil Coughlin
Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear
• Richard Collett is right about the limitations of physical borders, but his article fatally undermines his primary thesis. Building “higher walls or digging deeper ditches” has worked repeatedly, according to his own examples, though they have a limited lifespan and never achieve 100% success. Their morality, and the damage they do to humanity, are the real issues, not their effectiveness.
Ken Rutter
Sheffield
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