Letters: Voters are losing patience with this divided, out-of-touch Government

SIR – On Thursday’s Today programme, Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, suggested that the public was not interested in the recent machinations at 10 Downing Street. In doing so he showed just how out of touch some ministers are.

The chaos that has emanated from the heart of Government since day one of the pandemic reflects a lack of effective leadership. In the fullness of time British voters will demonstrate just how interested they are – and the results will not be pretty.

Catherine Castree
Fetcham, Surrey

SIR – I voted for a Conservative candidate in order to elect a Conservative government, on the basis of the party’s manifesto and its leader. I did not vote for Dominic Cummings, Lee Cain – or indeed Carrie Symonds.

Several years earlier, the country – encouraged by Boris Johnson – voted to free itself from the commands of an unelected set of bureaucrats more interested in their own importance than those who pay for them. Let all the Spads and consultants eliminate each other in their internecine power struggles.

Barry Hazelwood
Deal, Kent

SIR – The fall of Dominic Cummings seems to have been well received, and in fairness spin doctors are rarely likeable (Alastair Campbell being a prime example).

For all his faults, Mr Cummings pressed for Brexit, Civil Service reform and investment in science and technology. He was right about all of those things.

Mick Ferrie
Mawnan Smith, Cornwall

SIR – The Blob has won. That’s the end of our dreams of a new, dynamic, independent country.

David Northcott
York

SIR – One of the things I have learnt during 70 years on this planet is that what goes around comes around. I fear that Boris Johnson is learning this, too.

He got elected (as Conservative leader and prime minister) on the back of some dubious claims and some dubious people who think rules are for others, not themselves (Mr Cummings is one such).

Unfortunately, you cannot fool all the people all the time. Many British voters are now realising that Mr Johnson is more concerned with himself than with providing good governance at a time of unprecedented threats. I say this with sadness as someone who has always supported the Conservative Party.

Gordon Pugh
Claygate, Surrey

SIR – I note that a number of your correspondents have said they will never vote for the Conservative Party again.

Perhaps they would like to tell us for whom they intend to vote in future.

Andrew Browne
Chinnor, Oxfordshire

Covid and the law

SIR – One of the things I have found strangest and most objectionable about the Covid-19 business is the near-total absence from it all of the courts, throughout the UK.

Lord Sumption correctly describes the measures now in place as worse, in their various ways, than the measures imposed during the Second World War, which were at least challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, all the way to the House of Lords.

The case is Liversidge v Anderson, and throughout my years of studying, teaching and practising law, it was generally regarded as a disgrace. Hundreds of people were incarcerated without trial pursuant to it. I’m at a loss to see how things have changed.

Parliamentary scrutiny of the present measures has been minimal. There is no science to follow. Where is Gina Miller now, when she might have something useful to say – even something democratic, and fair to people not rich enough to live in her world, even though these are the people losing jobs and terrified for their children’s future, to say nothing of their own?

Jane Smith
Edinburgh

Shameful track record

SIR – The destruction of the 250-year-old Cubbington pear tree (Letters, November 8) symbolises the appalling way in which our politicians and their advisers have pushed through HS2.

Lord Adonis, the last Labour Transport Secretary and the instigator of the project, ordered its planning to be done in just nine months, and issued its single, destructive, route in March 2010.

His Tory successor, Philip Hammond, refused the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s call in 2011 to follow established consultation rules for road and rail schemes by publishing a range of alternatives. Had he done so, a less damaging and costly plan would have been chosen before a Bill reached Parliament.

In 2019, Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings, a known opponent of HS2, had the opportunity to stop it. He was sent CPRE’s alternatives to help him. His failure to get Downing Street to stand up to the Civil Service and construction lobbies means that he is leaving a negative legacy, when it could have been a positive one.

Mark Sullivan
Chairman, Campaign to Protect Rural England, West Midlands Region
Warwick

Helpful hounds

SIR – Zoe Strimpel (Comment, November 8) tells us that “dogs have finally earned my respect”.

Is she unaware of the many guide dogs helping blind people lead active lives; the assistance dogs doing the same thing for those with hearing impairments and other disabilities; or the “buddy dogs” that help vulnerable children gain the confidence required to interact in the wider community?

Ms Strimpel might also want to remember the police and military dogs that assist their handlers in myriad tasks, including sniffing out drugs and explosives at airports. Then there are the farm dogs that help hard-pressed farmers control their animals, and the guard dogs that protect business premises from thieves.

All of these activities have been going on for many years. How can Ms Strimpel only now be amazed by the actions of three Covid-19 detector dogs?

L J Hale
Worthing, West Sussex

Ever unknown

SIR – With regard to Joe Shute’s article, I cannot comment on the veracity of Tim Kendall’s grandfather’s story, but I can comment on that of my grandfather’s cousin, Brigadier General Louis John Wyatt.

There are differences. The direct report from Wyatt states that, on the night of November 7 1920, the bodies of four unidentified soldiers were brought to the hut that served as the chapel of the town Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise (location of British General headquarters), near Arras in the department of Pas-de-Calais. Each had come from one of the four battle areas over which British troops had fought during the Great War: the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres.

At midnight, Wyatt and Lt Col E A S Gell (also from the directorate) entered the chapel. Wyatt picked out at random one of the bodies. He and Gell transferred the remains of the soldier into a pine coffin placed in front of the altar and screwed down the lid.

It then started its journey to Westminster Abbey. Quite how the Rev George Kendall knew who the Unknown Warrior was is a mystery. Certainly Wyatt, as Director of Graves Registration and Enquiries, did not.

Lt Col John Wyatt (retd)
Cranbrook, Kent

Mask interrogators

SIR – As one of the hundreds of thousands of people with a hidden disability who legitimately cannot wear a face mask, I have got used to being tutted at in shops, getting dirty stares on public transport and being talked about while standing in queues.

What I have not been prepared for is shopkeepers threatening to quiz customers about their disability. For example, a restaurant nearby has posters warning: “No mask, no service, unless you can prove you are exempt”. A tea shop in Leicester Square declares that “you may be asked to provide proof” of an exemption.

Even with my exemption card on display, I do not wish to enter such premises, for fear of being asked personal questions about my health. I recently spoke to a person with far more noticeable disabilities than my own who told me about being quizzed in a bakery after entering without a mask. When he refused to disclose details, the store called the police.

We are at risk of undoing years of hard-won progress on disability discrimination and equality.

Kevin Frost
London W14

Why grouse moors are good for wildlife

SIR – Professor Arthur Morris (Letters, November 8) is wrong: a significant part of the Scottish government’s commissioned research into grouse moor management was dedicated to the biodiversity impacts.

It did not consider the socioeconomic indicators in isolation, as he suggests. Indeed, the research found that the practice of muirburn (controlled burning) has considerable benefits for moorland wildlife – including golden plover, merlin, curlew, whinchat and lesser redpoll. Professor Morris should read the research more closely before calling grouse moors “ecological deserts”.

Ross Ewing
The British Association for Shooting and Conservation, Scottish Centre
Dunkeld, Perthshire

SIR – Grouse moors polarise opinion. Many reports have been produced; some are very supportive and others are totally opposed.

Managed grouse moorland is not new, however. Little has changed since driven grouse shooting started in the 1860s. Critics cite flooding as a direct result of this management but ignore the fact that the most severe floods have occurred far away from such land – in Lynmouth in 1952, for example, or Boscastle in 2004.

Governments paid owners to drain their moors in the Sixties; now they pay to have the drains (or “grips”) blocked, to enhance the flora and fauna. Many moors are Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

Heather burning is often blamed for floods, though more severe storms due to climate change are now much more prevalent. In fact, heather burning – a vital management tool – is much more environmentally friendly than it used to be. The worst moorland fires of recent years – like that on Saddleworth Moor in 2018 – have occurred on unmanaged land, where the heather becomes tall, woody – and highly flammable.

How Professor Morris can blame the moors for “landslides, which block railways and roads”, I don’t know. He advises planting trees, but if he wants to see a true “ecological desert”, he need only look at the thousands of acres of conifers, which support virtually no wildlife.

Rupert Godfrey
Devizes, Wiltshire

The key to a quicker Irish rail connection

SIR – Ross Clark (“A tunnel to Belfast would be Boris Johnson’s ultimate white elephant”, Comment, November 8) rightly points out that the journey from Stranraer to Euston alone takes seven and a half hours.

However, he forgets the closed but more direct route that once connected Stranraer to Dumfries and the South, lost to the Beeching cuts. Reopening this as part of the project would be relatively easy and a small part of the costs. The different rail gauges would be a problem, but not insurmountable.

Michael Denholm
Dunbar, East Lothian