I am delighted to hear that the Tory government has brought the era of austerity to an end (Labour attacks ‘appalling waste’ as PM adds £2bn to no-deal fund, 1 August). I gather we now have £2.1bn to spend. No more gloom and doom. Hurrah! One feels like shouting out the Eton Boating Song in joyous celebration.
However, instead of spending this egregious sum on schools, prisons, the criminal justice system, care for young, disabled and elderly people, and the NHS (of course, I forgot – the NHS will be funded by the imminent cessation of our contributions to the EU), I understand we are spending it on, inter alia, stockpiling medicines, ensuring adequate supplies of food and other essentials and, of course, PR, that ubiquitous tool for the manipulation of the masses.
And yet we are not in a state of war or anticipating a natural disaster; we are not in any situation imposed upon us by an external agent; we are in a situation entirely of our own choosing (commonly known as Brexit) which nevertheless apparently requires £2.1bn of taxpayers’ money to mitigate the inevitable, and now acknowledged, damage our foolishness will cause. And this is only a start.
The British nation has a death wish and Johnson, Farage et al are standing by to act as undertakers. The whole situation beggars belief.
Alice Maddalena
Bath
• The total of £6.3bn set aside for no-deal preparation is more than three months’ worth of the pledged £350m per week promised by the leave campaign to the NHS (£18.2bn per year). Puts the latest proposal of £1.8bn NHS cash injection into correct perspective – honouring one pledge but squandering three times as much.
Marion Hine
Framlingham, Suffolk
• I am writing regarding your article “No-deal Brexit: Your financial survival kit” (3 August). It was both informative and revealing, but also lacking in one small area. One thing you overlooked was British pensioners living in Europe and what they can do to avoid possible poverty as a result of the fall in the exchange rate.
If as the article suggests, and is agreed by reputable economists that the pound may fall to parity with the euro in the event of a no deal, that will mean a 23% drop in the value of the pound, this may mean near or actual poverty for a good percentage of the 247,000 (ONS figures) British citizens of pensionable age living in Europe as their pensions will become virtually worthless.
How do they survive? What can they do? The answer, unfortunately and depressingly, is nothing. Couple that with their possible inability to continue accessing NHS-funded medical treatment (as mentioned in the article), and the future is decidedly bleak. The only answer for some is to return to the UK. That’s all that most can do. Thousands upon thousands of ageing citizens descending on the UK looking for a GP, healthcare, housing, benefits etc. Sounds worrying and it should. Thanks, Boris, for your apparent casual acceptance of a possible no-deal Brexit.
Robert Greasley
Balve, Germany
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• The second letter in this package was amended on 4 August 2019. An earlier version miscalculated the £6.3bn set aside for no-deal preparation as being “more than three years’ worth of the pledged £350m per week promised by the leave campaign to the NHS (£1.8bn per year)”. The last figure should have been £18.2bn per year, meaning that £6.3bn would be more like three months’, not three years’, worth of £350m a week.
