• Economics are at the heart of the climate crisis
As a long-standing Guardian Weekly reader I was delighted when it announced its climate pledge last October. Imagine my disappointment when I read Phillip Inman’s article on the economic situation in China (7 February) and there was no questioning of the classical economic assumption that growth is always good, and a slowdown in GDP is always bad. It seems it is “business as usual” after all.
Until economists start to use the language of sustainability and limits to growth, then any climate pledge is necessarily undermined by the failure to accept the finite nature of our planet and its resources. Alternative economic models have been suggested for some time. When will promoting a different approach to economics also become fully embedded in your climate pledge?
Janet Appleby,
Whitley Bay, UK
• Repeating the mistakes of paraphrasing the past
George Santayana’s famous quote about not repeating the mistakes of the past appeared in his 1905 book The Life of Reason (The Auschwitz anniversary, 31 January). This would appear to make it difficult to have been inspired by the Holocaust. Facts, I believe on good authority, are sacred.
Warwick Ruse
Brunswick West, Victoria, Australia
Editor’s note: It was Winston Churchill who paraphrased Santayana’s quote in 1948.
• World Service reduction will mean loss of insight
It is very disappointing to read about the BBC’s reduction in its world news service (7 February). The BBC gives a valuable insight into world events by knowledgeable and articulate journalists, widely appreciated in countries which are more narrowly focused on their own local events or political biases, or are just sport mad.
Keep going, Guardian Weekly, we will need you more than ever.
Kitty Monk
Auckland, New Zealand
• Varadkar’s big political miscalculation
Regarding Leo Varadkar the ‘liberal lion’ fighting for his political future (7 February). In calling an early general election, Ireland’s taoiseach hoped to capitalise on his government’s handling of the Brexit crisis.
However, Brexit for Irish voters was the wolf that did not come to the door. In an exit poll 63% of voters said they did not feel any personal benefit gain from an economy that had improved in statistical terms. The high cost of living, unsatisfactory healthcare services and a sense of living just pay cheque to pay cheque led the voters’ move to alternative political choices.
Dan Donovan
Dungarvan, Ireland
• Antidote to January is stickier in Australia
My “Australian” version of the Guardian Weekly on 7 February included a recipe for “a real antidote to the months of January and February”. Had I consumed Thomasina Miers’ sticky whisky marmalade brioche pudding on 4 January, a 47C day (in the shade) at my place, I would have been incapable of moving to help defend our home against the Currowan bushfire that overtook us that evening. With all that butter, demerara sugar, brown sugar, whole milk, double cream and crème fraiche and marmalade I would have become something of a sticky pudding myself.
How about some relevant recipes for increasingly hotter Australian summers?
Maureen Bell
Kangaroo Valley, NSW, Australia
• A once-great paper, turned to mush?
One week it was multiple pages on a man sitting in a forest watching moss on trees and a river flow (31 January). The next it was about an addiction to trivial questions and their history (7 February).
A once great paper has turned to mush. Shameful.
Richard Abram
Sydney, NSW, Australia
• Mortality gap
I’ve been waiting for you to fix the gender balance issue in your deaths section, but it seems to be getting worse. Do notable women not die, or are you just having trouble noticing?
Alanna MacDougall
Ottawa, Ontario
• Caught by the fuzz
Thank-you the Guardian Weekly, even in your sparkling magazine format, for continuing the tradition of the Manchester Guardian with a typo regarding Sinn Féin riding a wave of anger over “fraying pubic services …” (A week in the life of the world,14 February). It made my week.
Hilary Bergeretti La Buisse, France
