The advent of mass-produced, electric-driven vehicles (“VW hopes electricity will power it back into pole position”, Business leader) augurs a global cultural change. But switching to EVs worldwide will involve considerable investment in new infrastructure, not least because of the inherent inefficiencies of storing and transmitting electricity.
Are the car-makers missing a great opportunity here? Almost unnoticed, alternative energy generation has mushroomed, growing by many times more than anticipated. Night-time wind power opens the way for the mass production of hydrogen through the electrolysis of tap water. Hydrogen is easy to store and transport, and fuel-cell vehicles emit nothing but water vapour. The deep-water wind turbines of the near future will take care of nimby objections to land-based turbines and large-scale hydrogen production through solar photovoltaic projects in, say, North African countries could provide a long-term export industry that supports economic prosperity and political stability. A neo-electric revolution is an attractive prospect but the dawning Age of Hydrogen is surely a better bargain.
Eurof Thomas
Cardiff
Integrate lifesaving services
Your piece about the RNLI and the Independent Lifeboat network was both shocking and saddening (“Hanging by a thread”, Magazine). It is hard to make sense of this arbitrary separation of the elements that provide lifesaving services in our coastal and inshore waters. The people who perform these services in life-threatening conditions are beyond reproach for their commitment and bravery. But the “suits” who run the more corporate entities such as the RNLI need to think about the moral imperative. Withdrawing services and leaving the situation to be sorted by hard-pressed independents and then treating them as commercial entities is beyond belief. They should not be “complementary services” – they should be a properly integrated service. If that is a pipe-dream, then the price of the RNLI withdrawing its services from an area should be a legal obligation within their charitable status that they donate everything to the independent lifeboat service that replaces them.
Paul F Faupel
Somersham
Cambridgeshire
Where exactly is the problem?
So let’s get this right. The New Review section of the Observer has a huge picture of a glamorous, young, healthy-looking blonde plus two double-spread pages with pictures of said blonde because she wrote a book about how terribly awful it is being middle aged (“My middle-age dread”). No hardships, deprivation or loneliness. The woman is presumably happily married with, I am sure, lovely children, a healthy income, a great future with nice friends who have a certain amount of celebrity status.
I wish her and her family a long and healthy life. But I do hope that Miranda may get over herself, take a good look at her life and realise that the rest of us, many much older, ordinary folk who go from one day to the next looking forward to getting out of mundane jobs they cannot stomach, may have better reasons to tell the world of their woes.
Eamonn Leniston
Taunton
Splash some cash on pools
As the co-author of Great Lengths, one of the “two bibles” of swimming devotees mentioned by Vanessa Thorpe in her excellent article (“How Britain’s passion for swimming is rescuing Victorian baths and lidos”, In Focus), I can reassure readers that the situation is not as bad as she paints. Rather than there being only 31 lidos remaining, there are 110, with three more due to reopen in the next two years.
While open-air pools are often criticised for not being cost-effective, as they open only during the summer, that is exactly the period when indoor pools are at their busiest owing to the weather and school holidays. I have never understood why more local authorities don’t emulate the likes of the Oasis (in Camden), Pools on the Park (in Richmond upon Thames) and Hillingdon, where indoor and outdoor pools coexist on the same site, thereby offering the best of both worlds.
Simon Inglis
Played in Britain series editor
London NW6
Now watch this space…
While your paper’s report of the safe return of Tim Peake was encouraging (“Tim Peake comes back to Earth”, News), remember his mission was the public demonstration of UK involvement in space exploration, which has gone on since the days of Apollo and perhaps before. The UK played a pivotal role in ESA’s Huygyens mission (landing on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon).
There are a number of non-government supported groups that have been carrying the torch for UK involvement in space matters for many years (eg my own, the British Interplanetary Society and Astra in Scotland). Tim Peake’s mission will hopefully enable a wider public appreciation of how much more the UK space sector has to offer us all for a positive, exciting and international future in space.
Malcolm Smith
British Interplanetary Society
London SW8
