Ed: This is the last ‘Letters’ column before Polling Day. It is short, not least because most of you have been out campaigning and thus had no time to write. Let me thank you all here for what you’ve done, irrespective of the parties you have campaigned for. As always, a campaign is down to us foot soldiers, so if your candidate hasn’t yet thanked you, regardless of the outcome, I do so here on behalf of all of us!

The three letters we publish below touch upon the major issues of the GE, although one of them has been sidelined in the MSM even though there was ample time to address it.

It is disturbing though that we’ll only learn on Friday how large the percentage of postal votes will be this time round. We know postal voting is open to massive fraud, we also know that these frauds are only investigated ‘after the event’, i.e. when an MP has been elected and has parked his backside on those green benches. In any case, this should give politicians food for thought: do their stunts really matter? Do these unspeakably dreary TV debates have any effect, except to make some wannabe TV ‘pundits’ get a star in their CV and a rise in their earnings?

Tomorrow then it’s for us to have our say. I’m sure the last-minute shenanigans of Johnson or Corbyn won’t change our vote. But going to the polling stations is vital! Turn-out really matters. So – don’t stay at home, no matter the weather!

 

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Sir,

My mother is 5 months short of her 100th birthday and has mostly managed to live in her own flat. She is, unsurprisingly, a little unsteady on her feet and recently had a fall. The hospital diagnosed anaemia. 

There’s a case meeting tomorrow and there is talk of sending her home with a care package. Last time the hospital did this – that was also just before Christmas – she was blue-lighted back to hospital in less than a day. 

Until NHS and care responsibilities are merged then cases like hers will always prove contentious, with the local authority and the NHS trying to save money by making short term decisions and dumping responsibility onto each other and onto increasingly desperate families.

One hundred years old and hurried out of hospital to save money. What a state we are in. 

Respectfully, (author known to the editor)

 

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Sir 

Sir John Major fought to keep the UK out of the flawed Eurozone, with a Maastricht opt out.

So isn’t it bizarre that, while all EU members are expected to join the Euro over the next few years, he has campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU?

The so called opt out means little because Article 5(3) of the Lisbon Treaty says that the “Union shall Act ……. if a proposed action CANNOT BE SUFFICIENTLY ACHIEVED BY MEMBER STATES…… 

Since U.K. MEPs comprise only about 10% of the total and self amending Treaty Change is in place, you don’t have to be a lawyer to see the high risk of the UK being dragged into the Eurozone, despite the “opt out.

WHY didn’t Sir John think of that, before he campaigned to remain in the EU? 

Respectfully, Mr King

 

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Sir

Ambrose Evans Pritchard tells us (DT Business 28th Nov) that “green technology has already won the battle that matters” , ie against the cost of coal,  because of the continued fall in the cost per kWh for solar and wind power. He might equally have argued that the cost per kWh for nuclear electricity is similar to that for hydroelectric power, ignoring relative differences in capital cost.

But he has missed the fact that solar and wind capacity has to be backed up by energy storage, standby power, plus smart grid control systems, to maintain supplies when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing – the capital cost of which cannot be ignored, when making such comparisons.

Indeed, to compare the cost of solar and wind, with the 24 x 7 conventional grid, you have to add the cost of back-up systems to turn an intermittent power source into a 24 x 7 one. We will know when true cost parity has been reached, when the owners of mainland domestic installations (with batteries) disconnect themselves from the grid, thereby saving the connection charge of well over £100 pa. Have any of your readers done that, or do they know anyone who has?

Respectfully, Roger Arthur

 

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