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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There’s nothing green about wind machines
Dear Editor
Wind farms are not ‘green’. Wind machines (they are not turbines in the engineering sense of the word) require gallons and gallons of gearbox oil, plus hydraulic oil. Both oils have to be changed roughly every 12 months and flushing oil may need to be used. Wind machines use fossil fuel in their manufacturing and construction, requiring coal to make steel for the towers and oil to make the rotor blades. Rare earths are also used in direct drive wind machines, including dysprosium, neodymium and praseodymium. China supplies 85 per cent of the world’s rare earths. Recently Sky News reported on Chinese rare earth production. The film-makers, despite being followed constantly and harassed by state authorities, managed to film the pollution caused by their extraction including severe water pollution of domestic supplies which resulted in the inhabitants of one village being forcibly moved away as 40 per cent of them had contracted cancer from the drinking water.
William Loneskie
Scottish Borders
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BBC’s niche viewers should pay for it
Dear Editor
A government investigation should be launched into the BBC’s planned screening of The Family Sex Show, now cancelled due to public pressure.
It took a petition and death threats for the BBC to pull this depraved programme intended for children. It’s beyond belief that the BBC should even consider this production as appropriate viewing. One more reason to defund the broadcaster.
Why do MPs insist that the BBC must continue, particularly when increasing numbers of people no longer watch or listen to it and millions are cancelling their licence? It has a niche audience and it’s this audience who should be paying for it, not the general population.
Rhydwenna Jones
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Solar panels can never meet demand for power
Dear Editor,
There are 8,760 hours in a year.
In the UK the sun shines for about 1,700 hours per year – about 20 per cent of the time. It varies with year and location; it is weak in the early mornings and late afternoons and not very strong in winter.
The Government’s own figures suggest solar panels operate at only 11 per cent of their capacity. That means that solar panels are useless for more than 80 per cent of the year.
Boris Johnson intends to add more solar panels – they will still be 80 per cent useless.
Why on Earth are we using solar panels as sources of power for the National Grid, which has to supply enough electricity to meet the prevailing demand – 8,760 hours per year?
Christopher Darwin
Devon
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Why Mrs Mopps don’t need a monument
Dear Editor
Re TCW’s article ‘Where’s the giant Mrs Mopp?’
Really?
I don’t see any monuments or statues of the millions of men burned to death in factories and foundries, poisoned by chemicals in tanneries and glassworks, crushed in mines, drowned at sea (bringing you that nice fresh piece of fish), gassed and blown up cleaning out industrial tanks and ships, etc.
I suggest that if Gail MacDonald wants a statue for all those terribly difficult tasks such as cooking and cleaning in a house or office, she can either pay for it or make it herself.
Martin Parker
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Masks are worse than useless
Dear Editor
I am writing this on the day that Scottish mask mandates are finally being dropped, and judging by scientific research this is long overdue.
I have found various studies that present evidence that masks make no difference to the spread of infectious disease or may even make things worse. Equally, I have found various studies that present evidence that masks do reduce the spread of infectious disease.
You may think therefore that you just have to decide which side to believe. But it’s not that simple. Masks could only be a good thing if people change or clean them at the recommended intervals, and if they handle them correctly. While I have found various scientific surveys that present results showing that people are not doing these things anywhere near enough, I haven’t found a single survey showing the opposite.
An example is the 2021 Belgian study on masks lead-authored by Lize Delanghe.The researchers found that after four hours of use 43 per cent of bacterial colonies on masks were resistant to widely-used antibiotics, and recommended that masks should be changed for clean ones daily as a minimum. They conducted a mask use survey with 25,000 participants. Only 21 per cent of responders reported cleaning their cotton face masks daily, 27 per cent washed them weekly and 6 per cent never washed them. Only 8 per cent of surgical mask users threw them away after each use, and 15 per cent threw them away only if they were visibly damaged or dirty. Thirty-six per cent had a health complaint when wearing a mask.
The other factor is the handling of masks. For example, hands should be cleaned before a mask is donned. Delanghe cites a Hong Kong study of 1,500 participants where ‘almost none of them’ used a mask correctly.
The evidence seems certain that, far from reducing the spread of infectious disease, mask use is increasing the spread.
Geoff Moore
Ross and Cromarty
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Child’s play
Dear Editor,
Printed on a sticker on a plastic bag –
‘This is not a toy’
I know this country is in a terrible financial state, but really?
Mrs Clark
Wiltshire
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Sturgeon’s empty vow
Dear Editor
The usual suspects are complaining that migrants crossing the Channel will be sent for processing in Rwanda. Will they finance the 28,500 migrants who landed illegally on our shores in 2021? Over 90 per cent of these migrants are fit strapping young men from Africa and the Middle East who are not asylum seekers but economic migrants seeking the land flowing with milk and honey and welfare benefits and free housing. Nicola Sturgeon said that the scheme was ‘despicable’ and that the Tory government was morally bankrupt. Five years ago she vowed to take a Syrian family into her own home but did not. Now that was ‘despicable’.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow
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Shareholders want competent board members, not diverse ones
Dear Editor
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been considering the make-up of company boards according to the sex of members.
Shareholders are unlikely to support politically correct rigging of company boards. Unless forced by government diktat, they will continue to invest in companies with the most competent board members, regardless of their background.
If there is any such diktat shareholders would likely move their investments to a less PC country, reducing government revenue in the process and our ability to fund quangos such as the FCA.
Roger J. Arthur
West Sussex
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Racially motivated crime is not one way
Dear Editor
Driving into Edinburgh this morning I was encouraged to see a large advertising hoarding with the slogan ‘Never forget Stephen Lawrence’ and a picture of his mother, Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon. It is almost 29 years since his racially motivated murder, but there are still racist criminal gangs active in our country.
I hope that this poster is the first of a series, and that, for instance, we will soon see a hoarding urging: ‘Never forget Kriss Donald’. Kriss was even younger than Stephen, only 15 years old, when in 2004 he was abducted, driven from Glasgow to Dundee and then back to Glasgow before being murdered.
I also hope that the campaign could be extended to raise awareness of the racially motivated grooming gangs which in many of our cities and towns continue to rape underage girls and force them into prostitution.
The common element in all these evil crimes is that, thanks to half a century of progressive ‘reform’ of policing and criminal justice, drug dealing gangs and other professional criminals do not fear the law at all. And because the SNP has taken this further in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK, Scots are in greater danger than others from these thugs.
Otto Inglis
Fife
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Bravo Mark Steyn!
Dear Editor
Mark Steyn . . . hero amongst cowards!
This is really the first truth session of calibre on the MSM . . .
More please!
Richard Tee
