Nicci Gerrard is right to draw attention to the damage imposed on care home residents with dementia by isolating them from family and friends (“How did we end up turning our care homes into jails of enforced loneliness?”, Comment). The needs of care home residents with hearing loss are also in danger of being overlooked. There is no requirement for homes to maintain the hearing aids of their residents and some homes lack staff with the necessary skills. Even before the virus struck, some residents were left incommunicado for weeks at a time in a personal lockdown hell. Research shows that hearing loss increases substantially the risk of dementia and grassroots voluntary organisations across the country testify to the patchy provision available. When will the government act?
Wally Harbert
Frome, Somerset
Nicci Gerrard’s article resonated with my experience of trying to stay in touch with my 93-year-old father. He is in a care home, and has dementia. He isn’t allowed out of his small room, and over the past seven weeks I have noticed a marked deterioration in his mental health. Covid-19 is indirectly hastening his demise.
Josephine Howell
Great Baddow, Essex
Asylum seekers ignored
I read with interest the article by Helena Smith about the low rate of the pandemic in Greece (“Greeks marvel at British Covid chaos as their lockdown lifts after just 150 deaths”, News). However, she does not mention that there are 37,427 asylum seekers in five of Greece’s islands (Chios, Kos, Leros, Lesbos and Samos), with facilities for only 6,095. They are kept literally as prisoners, living in sub-standard accommodation, without an entitlement to health services.
The Human Rights Watch representative, Belkis Wille, declared last month that the situation in the islands is approaching a human catastrophe. The EU has provided Greece with funding to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Greek government is not even attempting to improve the inhuman conditions in the camps. It is estimated that another 100,000 refugees live in mainland Greece. They may be living in better conditions than those left on the islands, but most of them too are in poor accommodation where the sanitary conditions are conducive to the spread of coronavirus.
Professor Shulamit Ramon
The University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, Herts
Road closures just the start
I read with excitement your coverage of the announcement that roads around schools are to be closed to keep everyone safer (“Roads near schools to close at peak times”, News). While I welcome any steps to reduce traffic on the school run, having successfully delivered one of the UK’s first traffic-free schools I’m afraid that closing roads alone will not have the desired impact.
At Ysgol Hamadryad in Cardiff, we decided from the outset to build a sustainable travel school. We worked closely with parents on mapping suitable routes and identifying any barriers to such travel. These included dangerous road junctions, lack of access to cycles/scooters, lack of confidence among children and timing challenges.
We delivered a range of measures, including: a walking bus that runs every day of the year; cycling and scooting lessons from year one; plenty of bike and scooter parking; driving and parking restrictions in the immediate vicinity; working out particularly challenging road junctions; support for parents to access low-cost bikes and scooters. In our first six months of operation, some 98% of children’s journeys to the school were active.
My plea to schools that will hopefully follow our example is to consider all aspects of travel to school, not just closing roads. By doing so, we can ensure that sustainable school runs are the future for all schools.
Dr Dafydd Trystan, chair of governors
Ysgol Hamadryad, Cardiff
Nuclear power? No thanks
Your business leader urges massive government intervention in support of new – as-yet not even designed – military-derived “small modular reactors” from Rolls Royce (“Government could save jobs at Rolls – if it reacts quickly”). Yet wind and solar energy prices are dropping precipitously. The British Isles have some of the best renewable resources in the world. There is no technical reason why the UK could not be fully and economically powered this way – more quickly creating far greater employment, with more secure export prospects. Even well established forms of nuclear are rapidly declining in competitiveness worldwide.
The nuclear industry has a track record of catastrophically expensive hype and disappointment on speculative new ventures like this, so there are no rational grounds to divert investment or employment away from renewables in the way you urge so strongly.
Professor Andy Stirling, Sussex University
Professor Andrew Blowers, Open University
Dr Phil Johnstone, Sussex University
Dr David Lowry, Institute for Resource and Security Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dr Ian Fairlie, formerly UK committee examining the radiation risks of internal emitters
Mr Grayson’s vanishing act
Regarding Julian Coman’s fascinating article about the disappearance in 1920 of the socialist agitator and former MP for Colne Valley, Victor Grayson (“Whatever happened to the Labour party’s firebrand lost leader?”, Focus). The late Leslie Lever, Labour MP for Manchester Ardwick, and later life peer, used to tell a story in the Commons’ tea room about an encounter during the 1950 general election campaign, when he had made a fiery socialist speech at an open-air meeting in Manchester.
As the meeting broke up, he was approached by an elderly gent, who said to him: “I used to believe all this stuff, but I don’t any more.” “What’s your name?” Lever asked. “Victor Grayson,” he replied, and slipped into the crowd.
If true, this would appear to corroborate the view that he was not murdered, but escaped into anonymity.
Dick Leonard, former Labour MP for Romford
London NW1
Nehru on the UN
As a former UN civil servant and former chairman of the (British) United Nations Association, I was delighted to read your supportive editorial (“The world needs the United Nations now more than ever”). I was reminded of a statement by the former Indian PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, that “if there was no United Nations, there would be the need to invent one”.
Michael Irwin
Cranleigh, Surrey
