As a long-time reader, I write to raise my disappointment in what I felt was an unnecessarily dismissive depiction of the lives of people in my home town (“‘They’re closing down Kent’: tiers and loathing in the town where Brexit and Covid meet”, News). The article about Dover caricatured a wide section of the population as both simplistically racist and naive. It serves to tar a wider community of selfless Dovorians such as the volunteer RNLI, which on an almost daily basis is helping to save the lives of those seeking asylum in the Channel, and the charity Samphire, which supports refugees here.
I live and work in Dover. As a secondary school English teacher, I encourage my students to engage positively and proactively in the town where they’re growing up. Therefore it’s disheartening to read a piece such as this from someone who doesn’t live in the area.
I and my students are acutely aware of poverty and social tensions. I and they know what it is to have free school meals. But we are engaged in politics. One of my afternoons as an 18-year-old was spent trudging up and down one of the estates talking to residents and encouraging them to vote in the people’s port initiative to stop the further privatisation of a local asset in 2011. Likewise, my students debate, question and think critically and creatively about the community.
I’ve been frustrated by Brexit and innumerable local and national issues, but it doesn’t mean I’ve lost hope in the town. Dover has failings and broken people – but it also has kindness and generosity.
Zechariah Bawtree
Duke of York’s Royal Military school
Dover, Kent
Green and pleasant land?
The article about the Old Deanery in Wells raises the question: what price does the Church of England put on the environment, safety and wellbeing of communities (“Church plan to sell deanery ‘puts profit before community’”, News)? In our case, we want to protect glebe land in the centre of West Kirby old village conservation area. In times past, the field was given to the church to support the local clergy; now, the diocese of Chester wants to sell to developers. They claim that charity law forces them to obtain the highest price.
The field has been used by the community since Saxon times and money does not put any value on the horses and other animals that live in the field, the trees the developers will cut down or its value in our conservation area. Nor do simple pounds and pence take account of the increased traffic and risk to parents and children accessing the school or the contribution the greenery makes to the landscape.
When the C of E is encouraging the status of “green churches”, surely some account should be taken of the impact of such a sale on the environment? Once the green and pleasant land is gone, there is no way to get it back.
Jim Darwent
West Kirby, Wirral
The simple way to level up
“Without significant redistribution, the job losses and pay cuts will leave countless families in dire financial straits” (Editorial). Sadly, none of the contributors to “Life after Covid: will our world ever be the same again?” (Focus) tackled this need for redistribution.
The Covid crisis gives a powerful opportunity to do this by introducing universal basic income as an unconditional, automatic, regular payment to every UK resident. It needs to be linked to a revised form of income tax that ensures that only those in need of UBI benefit from it and so would be best administered by the Inland Revenue. It would eliminate much bureaucracy and fairly redistribute some of the nation’s wealth. UBI would ensure that families lacking a wage earner have sufficient income to live on. Unemployment would no longer be feared.
Michael Bassey
Coddington, Newark, Nottinghamshire
I can’t get me out of my head
Thank you, Rachel Cooke, for hitting the nail on the head (“I long to get out – to see people and art, and to escape from myself”, Comment). Yes, I want to go to the theatre, concerts, exhibitions again, but most of all I too want to escape from myself. In my 80s and living alone, I have an OK social life, but so much concentration on me is bad for my health!
Jude McGowan
London W7
Our concerns over ME
We are writing to raise our concerns about the article on “long Covid” by Eleanor Morgan (“Is this now me forever?”, Magazine). Numerous studies show that support groups promote better mental health, yet Ms Morgan quotes an old canard that support groups “reinforce a ‘disease’ mindset”. There is no study that has provided evidence of the poor influence of support groups in people with ME. One study found that people in support groups tend to be more severely affected and it is this association alone to which Ms Morgan refers.
She also states that people with ME and long Covid push for “superfluous” testing. This is an opinion rather than a verifiable fact and, with the addition of the phrase “catastrophic thinking”, frames ME and long Covid as hysterical.
Ms Morgan ignores the fact that ME has been classified as a neurological disease by the World Health Organization since the 1960s. Many organisations, including the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Academy of Medicine, have felt obliged to reiterate that it is neither a psychological nor a psychosomatic disease. The new draft Nice guideline on ME/CFS calls it a complex, chronic medical condition affecting many body systems.
Finally, please note that the term “chronic fatigue syndrome” is generally viewed as stigmatising and belittling, suggesting that a multi-system disease is simply a case of being overly tired. The National Institute for Care and Health Excellence refers to the disease as ME/CFS.
Denise Spreag
On behalf of #MEAction UK
Maradona, Scottish hero
Kenan Malik gives voice weekly to many of the views that I have held for years. But I have finally found something about which I disagree with him (“Maradona’s defiance inspired me above all else”, Comment). Not all of Britain despised Maradona during the 1980s. We working-class Scots adored him; we saw him as one of us. Maradona knew this.
“I know the English hate me,” he once said. “But the Scottish love me and that is all that matters.”
John Blackburn
Worksop, Nottinghamshire
