Thank you for all your fantastic contributions this year. This will be the last Letters Page for 2023, but it will be back on Sunday January 7, so do keep sending in your thoughts for consideration to info@conservativewoman.co.uk.
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The cost of Nigel Farage’s recklessness
Dear Editor
Nigel Farage has apparently said ‘never say never’ regarding the possibility of rejoining the ‘Conservative’ Party. Mr Farage gifted Mr Johnson on an unimaginable scale when he stood down the Brexit Party entirely, making no effort to contest seats where the incumbent was a Remainer. In return Mr Johnson gave away Northern Ireland plus our fisheries industry and paid the EU billions of pounds while failing to address our annual trading deficit with the EU of over £125billion. His government failed to remove any notable European-based legislation and failed to withdraw from the ECHR.
To add injury to this insult, Johnson then declared an ‘emergency’ due to CV19, assumed dictatorial powers and spent in excess of £500billion on a virus with an Infection Fatality Rate of less than 0.3 per cent and an age profile above the average age of death.
Nigel Farage’s reckless decision has cost everyone dearly.
M Colley
Cambridgeshire
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Dismissed by the MHRA
A reader recently wrote to the MHRA and has shared their response with TCW.
Dear X
We have dealt with your email of 15 November 2023 as a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The FOIA grants access to recorded information held by public authorities; we confirm that we hold the explanation you have asked for and we provide this below.
You asked:
Would you kindly explain why you made a threatening telephone call to the offices of the Daily Telegraph, as stated in this article by a journalist with a long track record of reporting the truth:
It is against all applicable codes of practice for the MHRA to behave in this way. But in the circumstances of mass murder, or at least manslaughter, perhaps your pharmaceutical industry bosses were pressing you to keep quiet.
Do please tell us. If you do not, I may myself submit a FoI demand to the MHRA and also take legal advice about other avenues.
We understand that the article you mention relates to an online article published on 8 November 2023 at 5pm
The first paragraph of the article’s excerpt provides a link to its story published on 17 March 2021: ‘Link between cerebral blood clots and AstraZeneca vaccine ‘not implausible’, says German regulator’.
Having reviewed our records for this date, and to the best of our knowledge, we have no evidence that any phone call of this nature took place.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date you receive this response and addressed to: info@mhra.gov.uk
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.
If you were to remain dissatisfied with the outcome of the internal review, you would have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Please bear in mind that the Information Commissioner will not normally review our handling of your request unless you have first contacted us to conduct an internal review. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Or online via: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/foi-and-eir-complaints/foi-and-eir-complaints/
Yours sincerely
MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
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The civil servants’ four-day week doesn’t add up
Dear Editor
The Public and Commercial Services trade union, which represents junior and mid-level civil servants, is demanding that its members be allowed to work a four-day week on the same pay as for a five-day week. They claim that this will increase productivity and reduce employee burnout. Right.
As should be obvious, for this to work productivity would have to increase by 20 per cent – every worker would have to achieve in four days the output that is currently taking five. According to some experimental statistics from the ONS public sector, productivity has grown at an average of just 0.2 per cent per year since 1997. Yet the four-day week enthusiasts are attempting to persuade us that working one day less per week will achieve a century’s productivity increase overnight. How stupid do they think we are?
Paddy Benham-Crosswell
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Dear Editor
Delegates at COP28 are now openly saying that COP28’s ambitious targets to tackle climate change may not be achievable within timeframe. This should read ‘will never be achievable’. The reasons are crystal clear but some nations have their green glasses on, fingers and legs crossed and stubbornly refuse to face reality. Developing countries have refused to ‘phase out coal’ or even ‘phase down’ coal and are actually in the ‘phase up’ coal mode for many decades to come. COP28 is all about money, money, money. Western politicians are at COP28 in Dubai knowing full well that the developing nations are sitting like vultures ready to pick at the carcass of the proposed but stalling $100 billion a year Loss and Damage Fund to be financed by the developed countries which are alleged to have caused the climate damage to these developing countries. There is also a demand for reparations for past ‘climate-related disasters’ again allegedly caused by the developed nations. A recent paper by two British environmentalists in the journal Nature Sustainability claimed that Britain owes £6.2trillion, so what does the entire developed world owe? Time for politicians to grow a backbone and learn to say ‘No, no, no’ in various languages.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow