Letters: Labour’s plan for solar farms illuminates the depths of the net-zero delusion
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SIR – Matt Oliver and Jonathan Leake report that Labour plans to triple solar panel “farms” to cover up to 400,000 acres of farmland by 2030 (Business, January 14).
This scheme, which will destroy vast areas of arable land (encouraging us to import food) and landscapes will be called “greening” and “saving the planet”. Meanwhile, a vast solar panel installation in America has recently been wrecked by a hailstorm. And the panels will no doubt be from China – the chief source.
How far will net zero delusions go?
Roger Payne
London NW3
SIR – Labour’s ambition for the UK to be a “clean-energy superpower” by 2030 means decarbonising the grid.
What is its plan for the UK-wide reinforcement of electrical distribution to homes and businesses – which is necessary given the cessation of natural gas and the additional demand of charging electric vehicles? And what of the sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in existing and new electrical switchgear? A ton of sulphur hexafluoride has the global warming potential of 23,500 tons of carbon dioxide, and persists in the atmosphere for more than 1,000 years. The new electrical distribution at grid and local network level will have significant embodied carbon, too.
Is this all to be resolved by 2030?
John Knight
Bristol
Why marriage lasts
SIR – Rachel Johnson (Sunday, January 14) suggests that “marriage hasn’t moved with the times”.
Marriage is the system that almost all societies have applied throughout history to ensure men bond with the mothers of their future children. Most young adults still want to marry because they know intuitively that it’s the ultimate signal of reliable love and security. Dismissive attitudes to marriage among the political classes, who still marry in their droves and are protected by money, have already dissuaded many from taking this valuable step. Punitive welfare policies make it financially impossible for the poorest to marry.
The result of the trend away from marriage is that half of our teenagers don’t live with both parents. I’m just wrapping up a PhD on the psychology of marriage. Across any group you care to mention, parents who marry are significantly more likely to stay happily together than those who don’t.
Marriage may not be a panacea. But the psychology behind marriage stacks the odds in our favour – and in our children’s favour. Fashions may change, but human nature doesn’t.
Harry Benson
Research director, Marriage Foundation
Romford, Essex
Royal Navy readiness
SIR – You report (January 14) that the £3 billion aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth could not be sent to the Red Sea, where Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are carrying out attacks on shipping, because its support ship, RFA Fort Victoria, is operating on a skeleton staff, keeping it in a shipyard in Liverpool.
The Fort Victoria is not just a tanker, of which the Royal Navy has four, but a 36,000-ton combined fleet stores ship and tanker, providing solid-stores logistic support to the Carrier Strike Group. It is the sole vessel of its type in the Navy, and will remain so until three rather larger vessels of about 40,000 tons each, contracted to the Team Resolute consortium last year, are completed.
We built two aircraft carriers on the basis that one would always be operational; yet while they are currently dependent on one dry-stores supply ship, which is laid up, neither can be provisioned at sea in the optimal way.
This is an appalling situation that requires an immediate resolution. Surely our Navy, with its reputation for initiative, could have made other, albeit temporary, arrangements to maintain optimal operational capability – and if not, why not?
Robert Hickman
Andover, Hampshire
SIR – A wit of the period described the British Army of the Victorian era as “a social institution prepared for every emergency except that of war”.
After almost 14 years of Conservative rule, can the same now be said about the Royal Navy? We have aircraft carriers without planes, support ships without crews, destroyers with engines that don’t work, and – despite Russian aggression in Europe and ongoing tensions in the Middle East – we are scrapping ships much faster than we build them.
I would suggest that those in charge of the Royal Navy need to focus rather more on making it an effective, hard-hitting, war-fighting force, and rather less on being seen to be diverse (“The cult of diversity is becoming dangerous”, Comment, January 12).
Chris Ash
Cunningsburgh, Shetland
SIR – If Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, is so blind as to think that our Forces will prevail simply because of their “can-do” attitude (report, January 16), perhaps he should see what the Royal Navy “can do” to get a carrier out on station in the Middle East and ready for the next crisis; or maybe he thinks a paltry four jets from Akrotiri in Cyprus “can do” enough.
Unlike the Services whose attitude he so cheerfully champions, Mr Shapps can do a lot of a different sort of damage, all of his own, if he fails to remove the scales from his eyes and persists fooling no-one but himself over the very significant problems in Britain’s military robustness.
Ian Britten
Tavistock, Devon
Star signature
SIR – In my final term in 1967, three girlfriends and I stayed behind after school to rehearse for a forthcoming concert. Being a Friday, it was youth-club night, and the group for that evening duly arrived in our hall to prepare for the entertainment.
As giggly teenagers we thought the leader was dishy, so shyly went to ask him for his autograph (de rigueur in those days). He obliged, saying: “One day I’m going to be famous”.
It was David Bowie (Letters, January 14).
Rita Bishop
Theydon Bois, Essex
Demoralised Tories
SIR – When I read Adrian Barrett’s excellent letter (January 14) castigating the present Conservative Party and its recent terms in office, it almost jumped off the page.
The party’s manifest failures, caused by departure from its core principles, must surely mean that it is finished – certainly if this utterly demoralised former supporter has anything to do with it.
Clive Goddard
Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex
SIR – Adrian Barrett articulates perfectly how many of this country’s now former Conservative voters feel about being betrayed, taken for granted, deceived and grossly let down.
Chris Thorpe
Marden, Kent
SIR – Richard Tice, the leader of Reform UK, calls for proportional representation (Sunday Interview, January 14). My advice is to be careful what you wish for.
In New Zealand, since 1996 we have had a form of PR known as mixed-member proportional (MMP). This has allowed a collection of no-hopers into parliament, even into government. It has also led to the evolution of the most dangerous of animals: the professional politician. Too many of our MPs have no life or work experience outside politics, and they are a menace.
A better system for the UK would be the supplementary vote system, which is a mixture of first past the post and PR. It gives smaller parties a go, but is less likely to have tiny factions holding the government to ransom.
Dr Graham Sharpe
Wellington, New Zealand
Spare football’s match officials extra burdens
SIR – Sam Dalling’s article, “Ederson is the latest victim of officials’ delay in raising flag” (Sport, January 14), blames refereeing for an injury.
Had the attacker been onside, the injury would have happened anyway, and had the linesman raised his flag in error, many would have blamed him for disallowing a valid goal. He couldn’t win. In any event, the injury occurred as a result of the decisions and actions of the players – not the official or officialdom.
Referees’ assistants get offside decisions right in the vast majority of cases and should not be encouraged to raise their flags unless they are sure. As it is, match officials have a hard enough job, under constant scrutiny, and adding blame for injuries is an irrational extra burden.
Angus Roberts
Cranbrook, Kent
Trumpian tragedy
SIR – A few months ago I asked an American friend, who had previously run as the Democratic candidate for the governorship of Florida, what he currently thought about Donald Trump running for president again (“Trump conquers Iowa but Haley not cowed”, report, January 17).
“Very simple”, he said. “If he doesn’t run for president, he will go to jail.”
A tragedy in the making.
Ben Howkins
London SW11
Maufe’s memorials
SIR – Sir Edward Maufe’s tact (Letters, January 14) can also be seen at Tower Hill in east London. There, the Merchant Navy Memorial’s Second World War section commemorates twice as many merchant seafarers as the adjacent First World War section.
The latter is the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, and, rather than overshadow it, Maufe’s design took the form of a sunken garden, encircled within by bronze panels bearing some 24,000 names.
This helped reduce the visual impact on Tower Hill’s Trinity Square Gardens, where the memorial stands. Compensating for the loss of open space, highway adjustment added a little more in the gardens’ southeast corner. On this in 2005 was unveiled the Falklands Campaign section, designed by Gordon Newton. Its 17 names are thus part of the 36,000 honoured by the Merchant Navy Memorial – a greater total than that of any other Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial in the UK.
These were civilian men and women aged from 13 to 74 of more than 100 nationalities, who have no grave but the sea.
Roger Hoefling
London W9
Recapturing Coleridge
SIR – How can anyone deny the value of rote learning (Letters, January 14) – even if for nothing more than the multiplication tables?
When I was 30 I went on a walking holiday on Exmoor. The last day was one of thick fog, so, with nothing to look at, I tried to recapture Kubla Khan, which I had learnt when I was 12.
Eventually I was able to recite the whole poem to the sheep, who, obviously knowing that it had been written on Exmoor, were most impressed.
J T Campbell
Beccles, Suffolk
SIR – Sixty years ago, on leaving prep school, my classmates and I detested Kennedy’s Latin Primer (Letters, January 14) so intensely that we ceremoniously threw our copies, stained with smudged ink, into a brazier by our playground where a fire had been left burning.
Little did I know that later, at Hurstpierpoint College, I would be taught by an ancient and inspirational Latin teacher, Mr “Bugs” Bury, who would punish the slightest inattention by announcing: “One penny, boy”. The offender had to shuffle up to the front of the class to drop an old penny into a box on Mr Bury’s desk – to much collective mirth.
The term’s best Latin pupil was awarded its contents. I never won.
Robin Sanderson
Oxford
SIR – Rote learning has so much to be said for it. Another trick I still use is to make up a mnemonic for things that are otherwise tricky to remember, like the colour-coded bands on electronic resistors or the distances of the planets from the sun.
John Bath
Clevedon, Somerset
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