The depopulation of the Scottish islands is linked to their poor transport infrastructure (“Saving Scotland’s islands”, Special report, last week). Compared with Norway, let alone the Faroe Islands, the UK is tinkering at the edges. Compared with our continental neighbours, even southern England has a dearth of road tunnels, so the A41 scythes though the Chilterns, and the M3 slices though Twyford Down.
Like Bute, Millport, Mull and even Orkney, the Isle of Wight, with significant deprivation, remains impoverished without a fixed link to mainland Britain. Thanks to higher taxes and support from Denmark, most of the Faroe Islands, with a growing population of 49,179, has an expanding network of tunnels and bridges. Further sub-sea tunnels are under construction, with a 10.6km tunnel linking Tórshavn and the island of Sandoy, and another connecting the southern ends of two peninsulas on Eysturoy.
It would be possible for tunnels to link Millport and Bute and reduce the isolation of the Kintyre peninsula. Although there is something magical about the ferry to Iona from Fionnphort, Mull and the Morvern peninsular should be linked.
David Nowell
New Barnet, Hertfordshire
Animals breeding resistance
Congratulations on your article “The world is facing an antibiotic apocalypse” (News, last week). However, as a GP, I would like to explore some of the points. According to NHS Improvement, in 2015-16, GPs cut antibiotic use by 7.3%. Some 2.7m fewer antibiotics were prescribed. The unnecessary use of broad spectrum antibiotics, used in the treatment of severe infection, fell by 16%. Some 80% of antibiotics handed out are prescribed by GPs, who recognise the problems of antibiotic resistance.
In farming, the overuse of antibiotics in food animals is leading to a crisis in resistance. In the US, 80% of all antibiotics used are given to food animals. Globally, animals receive almost three times as many antibiotics as people. The use of antibiotics in food animals is often not medically necessary. They are used to promote growth and prevent illnesses that result from severe overcrowding and filthy living conditions.
Dr Chris Woods
Bury, Lancashire
Gun lobby’s lethal cant
Once again, after the mass shootings in Las Vegas, the US gun lobby and its apologists defend their constitutional right to “bear arms”. Apparently, daily shootings and occasional mass carnage is the price US citizens will have to pay. (“After Vegas, why do we still treat the US as a civilised state?”, Catherine Bennett, last week). Listening to the specious arguments peddled on behalf of the firearms industry reminded me of a quote by the US author Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Barry Solomons
Manchester
Nuclear power still too costly
The section on nuclear power in “How green is Britain’s record on renewable energy supply?” (Business, last week) gave a wrong impression. It gave the percentage of electricity generated by nuclear power as 23.6% in April and June this year and an EDF prediction for that percentage by 2035 as “around a third”. The article lists the requirements – completion of Hinkley Point C and three other power stations – without raising the probability that will not happen, partly because of the massive subsidies which would be required.
Many planned renewable power installations are costed as producing electricity at half the projected cost of nuclear, and likely to decrease, whereas nuclear costs are projected to increase. Renewables could efficiently provide for our needs without the need for expensive nuclear power.
Richard Wells
Aberystwyth
It’s us against the EU
David Goodhart’s conclusion (“Britons need to rediscover the ties that bind”, Comment, last week) concurred with my thinking: the EU isn’t negotiating in good faith, but willing failure.
David Davis ingeniously met the EU’s insistence on keeping the Irish border porous, only to be rebuffed. There was a refusal to enter into negotiations on even a transitional agreement on trade in goods and services. The EU wants its citizens to have more rights here than ours. Its attitude is so self-important and condescending that it’s beginning to justify our coming out.
Because of the EU’s intransigence, we are coming together, willing to make a success of the hard Brexit in prospect. It will be unity against the EU and, I suspect, under a Tory government come the next election. I cannot conceive our admitting to the EU that we’ve made a mistake and asking permission to crawl back in, on whatever conditions it lays down.
John Cairns
Richmond upon Thames
Tory humbug
Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of becoming Tory leader (“On the trail of the pinstripe pretender”, New Review, last week). In times of his party’s malaise, he is comfort food, a liquorice allsort, aniseed ball or humbug – fleetingly toothsome, but not a sustaining diet.
Toby Wood
Peterborough
