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Letter of the week: Starmer is no hero
Dear Editor
I am bored with getting to the end of a week full of painful news emanating from our government – I can mention this time, for example, the accidental release of the Epping sex offender, Rachel Reeves hinting that our annual ISA allowance will be limited in another state overreach – and finding Keir Starmer fawning over Zelensky and assuming the role of ultimate international hero. He is no hero.
Bill Kenwright
London
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Why the addiction to the triple lock?
Dear Editor
This is the first year I have received a state pension and I must confess to feeling rather guilty about it. Why? Well, I am one of the lucky ones to be still working full-time and receiving a decent level of income.
That’s why I don’t understand the commentary about the government’s need to keep faith with the ‘triple lock’, and wonder why it should be the case for all UK residents entitled to receive the state pension.
Surely it should be means-tested if you are still earning? What I have in mind is that once an individual receives over a certain level of income, say £150,000, as this is the current threshold at which the additional 45 per cent tax rate kicks in, that for every £2 of additional income the individual loses £1 of state pension.
In this way, once somebody earns an income of over £175,000 plus, they’ll receive no state pension at all. It must make sense for the general economy as well as for the Treasury.
The arrangement would work on a year-by-year basis so once your income stopped or dropped below the threshold then you would be entitled to receive the state pension or a proportion of it once again for the coming and further years.
Ronald Dryden
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Attention Lenny Henry – the facts about slavery
Dear Editor
I assume that Lenny Henry’s recent statement that Britain should make £trillions in reparation to those people enslaved by Britain refers to the period of 18th and 19th centuries.
He should, however, read the following statement, which clearly lays out the position of Slavery, from the beginning, and therefore his claim against Britain must not be accepted in isolation but should cover all nations and civilisations since those ancient times.
Slavery in ancient cultures was known to occur in civilisations as old as Sumer, and it was found in every civilisation, including Ancient Egypt, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient Greece, Ancient Persia, Rome and parts of its empire, and the Islamic Caliphate. Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war and child abandonment.
The early medieval slave sex trade was mainly to the East: the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world were the destinations, pagan Central and Eastern Europe, along with the Caucasus and Tartary, were important sources. Viking, Arab, Greek and Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the early Middle Ages.
Some historians estimate that between 11million and 18million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Sahara Desert from 650 AD. Between 1million and 1.25million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against ‘the usurping King of Lagos’, deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with more than 50 African rulers.
John Taylor
Staffordshire Moorlands
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The Sheku Bayoh inquiry – a woke lawyer-enriching crusade
Dear Editor
The public inquiry into whether racism played a part in the 2015 death of Sheku Bayoh as he resisted arrest has cost £50million to date! That is £26million for the inquiry itself, and the balance for the police’s involvement. Now with the resignation of the chairman Lord Bracadale the costs of this unfinished inquiry will go up all the further.
Mr Bayoh chose to take a cocktail of illegal drugs, which led to him leaving a friend’s house in a disturbed state of mind armed with a knife, alarming members of the public and subsequently assaulting a policewoman in full view of several other officers. To any normal person, ie one not obsessed by anti-racism, he was to blame for his tragic death, not the police officers.
Our politicians and civil servants need to get a grip. There are many far more important uses for £50million-plus of taxpayers’ money than a woke lawyer-enriching crusade.
Otto Inglis
Fife
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Don’t believe the ‘cheap wind power’ fairy tale
Dear Editor
Those wearing green spectacles believe all the fairy tales that the UK would get cheap renewable electricity if it were not for nasty gas. Well, ‘nasty gas’ kept the lights on in the last 12 months by supplying 30.7 per cent of our electricity. I agree that the strike price of wind is cheaper than gas but that is before the green subsidies are added on. The wind industry gets billions in subsidies every year in addition to their strike price. Constraint payments are expected to increase from £1.5billion in 2024 to £2.4billion in 2025. The Contracts for Difference scheme has paid out £10billion and counting. For one year 2023/2024 the Renewables Obligation sucked £4.6billion from consumers. The total cost to the electricity consumer of renewable electricity subsidy schemes since 2002 is £220billion. The UK is now the second most expensive in the world for electricity, 63 per cent higher than France and 27 per cent higher than Germany. Go green, go bust.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow
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Door-to-door covid jab peddling
Dear Editor
Covid shots are now being flogged door to door! This morning I opened the door to a delightful lady who had come to give me my covid and flu injections. She arrived unannounced, wearing an NHS fleece (but no lanyard!) and carrying a freezer bag. She claimed not to know that I have refused the jab from the beginning of the scam and she was happy to take No for an answer. What will happen next season, I wonder? Will she be accompanied by a couple of ‘enforcers’?
Having refused my doctor’s hard sell at the start of the pandemic, I have rejected the annual emailed invitations to have the jab, the last one a year ago when I gave as my reason for refusal my allergy to myocarditis. It seems that they’re becoming increasingly desperate to push their poison!
Stuart Cherry
Gloucestershire
