What is best for the planet?
Under the headline, Brexit threat to UK carmakers (10 March), you printed a map of how crankshafts for the BMW Mini cross the channel three times. You use this as a concrete example of how Brexit will negatively impact the British economy. But the Guardian has consistently stated that opposing climate change is a top priority. If you would run this article through a climate change filter you would see instantly how, in this case, Brexit would benefit the planet. Imagine a world map showing all the car parts which criss-cross the globe with their collective carbon footprint.
On the same page we read that Snapchat is worth $28bn. This, like the case of tech companies such as Google and Facebook, is all about its value as a virtual billboard for advertising. Countless billions just for the billboards used by advertisers to persuade people to consume things they don’t need. Good for the economy. Not so good for the planet. Not so good for our grandchildren.
Edward Butterworth
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Britain must be more caring
That Britain lets in few refugees is symptomatic of a country that treats the disadvantaged appallingly (10 March). We learn that the asylum seekers who make it here do not have the right to work, are given insufficient money to live on and all too often end up homeless.
Until about 30 years ago, homelessness was rare in Britain. Nowadays, an evening walk through the affluent city centre of Norwich is shocking. Dozens of people lie huddled in sleeping bags in shop doorways. Some of them will have suffered benefit sanctions, perhaps for being late for a single appointment. Others will have been children in care, who are left to fend for themselves at 16; a few are asylum seekers.
Two years ago a Norwich homeless person was kicked to death in the underpass where he slept. Council houses that used to provide cheap, permanent rented homes were sold off by Margaret Thatcher. She also abolished fair rent legislation, making the remaining tenancies unaffordable for many. The current political situation has alarming parallels to that of the 1930s; Germany learnt bitter lessons and as a result welcomes many refugees. In contrast, Britain’s mass media fuels xenophobia and a culture of blame. We are on the verge of ceasing to be a caring society.
Angela Smith
Norwich, UK
Much better than a gym
Why do we so often think of exercise as something requiring a “gym” type uniform or as some form of sporting activity (24 February)? After my final four working years in Dubai, I had acquired more than 10kg of excess body mass, ie fat. I retired to my farm in Thailand, aged 60 and dropped my weight from 90kg to 78kg in a year.
I exercise on the farm by moving, lifting and carrying things and by pulling up weeds and digging up the dirt for tree planting and so on. I am not fanatical and I do what I am comfortable with doing. I am not lazy either, but some tasks wait for a day or two before completion.
Maybe after Brexit has taken effect, with immigrant labour banished, farmers might think of employing older people to work with them. Yes, older people are more careful and more gentle but slower than younger ones, but when paid by the kilo picked, where is the problem?
And think of the benefits to those older folk: fresh air, exercise, meeting similar others, some money in the pocket and a sense of usefulness. Much better than going to a gym, surely?
George Hanna
Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand
Modest proposal for Scotland
Scotland faces a difficult path if it wishes both to become its own country and to retain membership of the European Union (17 March). But here’s a strategy. Scotland was not conquered, but joined England and Wales in a Treaty of Union that was approved by an Act of the Scottish parliament in 1707. At least nominally, it was voluntary (though England had put great duress on Scotland to join). In the words of the treaty, the two countries were “United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain”. Thus, they were – and are – equal partners in the union.
As far as I know, there’s no “article 50” for orderly dissolution of this union. So Scotland should simply expel England and Wales and claim, by virtue of continuity, the entitlements of the UK in Europe. (Ireland was not part of the original union.) Assuming that the majority of Scots want both independence from England and membership of the EU and that the majority of English and the Welsh want exit from the EU, then everyone should be satisfied. The EU shouldn’t get too ruffled, because England would be the “breakaway entity” – and they’re planning to leave the EU anyway. Sorted!
Meilir Page
Renton, Washington, US
Briefly
• Margaret Thatcher was right on the money when she asserted, “If they do televise [the House of Commons] they will only televise a televised House which will be quite different from the House of Commons we know” (Archive, 10 May). It’s only human nature to play to the cameras – I always did a disco pirouette at 6am for the CCTV surveillance throughout our school halls. Our lady principal, though – the only one else there – didn’t approve when she caught it on her office TV.
RM Fransson
Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US
• Richard Orlando’s letter (Reply, 3 March) raises the question regarding the great sadness for so many of us in the global Guardian community and our empathy for Barack Obama and his destroyed legacy. Here was a good president doing his progressive best for the common good (albeit imperfectly) and working hard to succeed in his ongoing legacy via a tragic campaign for Hillary Clinton.
Obama chose the wrong standard-bearer for his legacy; perhaps he now utterly rues the day when he could have backed Bernie Sanders. Who will Obama back now as his new standard bearer?
David Taplin
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• In your article about fatty acids, Michael Pollan notes that the ratio of beneficial (omega-3) fatty acids to that of the detrimental omega-6 kind in fleshy food is determined by what the food has eaten, not what it is (10 March). Beneficial ratios of these two fatty acids are found in wild fish and grass-fed cattle, both of which eat their natural diets. We need not sweep the ocean clean in search of healthy food.
Michael Goldeen
Carson City, Nevada, US
• In a world where the power grid allows a lunatic fringe to use the internet for malevolent political purposes, we are reassured (10 March) that bibliomaniacs still exist who are protecting for future generations what Henry Thoreau called our “wilderness of books”.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• With reference to two recent articles – one on Rorschach testing (10 March) and Oliver Burkeman (17 February) – a common point is made: that what we see is an interpretation of reality. On Rorschach testing, I am reminded of the joke, when the interviewee is rebuked for seeing sexual content, he replies, “Why do you say that? It is you who is drawing the pictures.”
I am less forgiving of Oliver Burkeman’s article saying we should not write notes as we study, as it distorts reality. Such talk is a fashion, and will be reversed with the next fashion. Necessarily, all note taking is a time-honoured memory aid and is a summation of what is learned.
Nothing wrong with that.
Stephen Banks
Birmingham, UK
• I am sorry Eleanor Ainge Roy had such a rotten New Zealand summer (3 March). Funny, that, because we had a sunny four weeks in late January and February, in Wellington, Christchurch, Temuka and way up the Rangitata river at Mesopotamia. We had one day of rain. I decided that the New Zealand sun is even hotter than the Australian sun and wondered if it was because of a lack of dust.
I am happy to display the white band on my wrist, where my watch was, to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research as evidence.
Elizabeth Teather
Canberra, Australia
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