PLEASE send your letters (as short as you like) to info@conservativewoman.co.uk and mark them ‘for possible publication’. We need your name and if possible, a county address, eg Yorkshire or London. We will include biographical details if you volunteer them. Letters may be shortened.
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Friends of the Earth or our enemies?
Dear Editor
Friends of the Earth (FoE) are not to be trusted. The organisation was accused of scaremongering to raise money by making claims in a leaflet in a political campaign saying fracking used toxic chemicals, that extracting shale gas caused cancer, water to catch fire, poisoned underground water, increased radioactivity and caused ‘earthquakes’. The chemicals used are sand and a small amount of soap and bleach which can be found under every kitchen sink. The tremors experienced during fracking trials were not nearly as much as a number 9 bus going past a house. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ordered FoE not to make such unproven and scaremongering allegations again. Why was the charitable status of FoE not removed? Friends of the Earth, a registered charity, avoided restrictions by claiming that the political anti-fracking campaign was being carried out by a non-charitable company called Friends of the Earth Limited. So do you believe a devious FoE or respected scientists and engineers? The UK will need gas for decades to come to back up unreliable wind farms, heat homes and make vital chemicals for industry. The UK must drill and frack to survive.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow
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Asking questions is ‘vexatious’
Dear Editor
I read Gillian Dymond’s article ‘The deafening silence of Dame June Raine’ with interest. It matches my experience with an FoI Request to MHRA about Yellow Card investigations into Covid-19 vaccine adverse reactions. Put very briefly, I submitted my request in December, and received an answer in January describing me as ‘vexatious’, which an Internal Review confirmed.
The case has now been accepted by the Information Commissioner’s Office but they cannot allocate a case officer for about nine months. Will my simple question receive a still-born answer? I am patient.
Louise Blore
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I fear the West more than Russia
Dear Editor
Spot on, Kathy, regarding the Ukraine narrative. The question is what is to be done about our politics and media? I fear the West/US/UK more than Russia since it’s in a psychotic grip with cool and rational leadership entirely absent for managing the crisis. Parliament high on emotion, low on reason and objectivity, collectively unintelligent and ill-informed, resolutely unwilling and unable to take a rounded perspective but engaging in warmongering rhetoric, is a fearful sight, and it’s these people not Putin who govern us. There doesn’t seem to be any way of stopping them taking us headlong into disaster.
As I write, a moment ago, warplanes shot overhead leaving a boom as they went.
Rhydwenna E Jones
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Billions to burn
Hello,
Glad to see that there is plenty of money still about, and we are able to burn billions of unusable PPE.
Any chance that the people responsible will be held to account?
No way, too many people have made too much money for that to happen.
Not to worry, the taxpayers will foot the bill.
Stephen Sienczyk
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It’s a knack
A reader’s letter to the Daily Telegraph, which the paper declined to publish.
Dear Editor
Does the editor of the Daily Telegraph speak English?
In your coverage of Shane Warne’s sad demise (report March 7) you say that for the last 14 days of his life ‘he ate only fluids’. Your headline refers to ‘the run-up to his death’.
What a remarkable combination of illiteracy and tastelessness.
Rev’d Dr Peter Mullen
Eastbourne
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The idiocy of capping fracking sites
A second reader’s letter to the Daily Telegraph, which the paper declined to publish.
Sir,
The DT Editorial of 10-03-22 is apposite. SMRs (Small to Medium nuclear Reactors) are not over dependent on overseas suppliers, they are of a proven design and they cost around half the cost per kW of the Sizewell project.
But we will need at least 45 of them to replace the fossil fuelled power stations which currently keep the lights on, when there is little sun or wind. Sadly at the current rate, we will be lucky to see that many commissioned before 2040, never mind 2030.
Yes hydrogen (H2) could provide an alternative but the energy needed to release it by electrolysis, equates to over 150 per cent of the energy in the gas released.
Allowing that the losses incurred in H2 gas turbine generators – while solar and wind generators only provide output for around 25 per cent of the time – we will need more than 5 times the wind and solar capacity currently planned.
Add to that the cost of H2 transport and storage, plus the fresh water needed, then ask how many (green H2) electrolysers are actually on order or being built in the UK? The answer nowhere near enough to match the projected need and so we will continue to depend on overseas energy suppliers for a long time to come.
In the circumstances, the capping of fracking sites looks like gross (if not criminal) negligence, As indicated by John MacGregor – once transport minister – politicians can ‘only think in electoral cycles’, not in the timescales needed for major projects. Shame on them. The sovereign people deserve a lot better.
Roger J Arthur
West Sussex
