Energy prices, Queen, immigration, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – Lynn News letters September 13

At what point will the catastrophic energy prices trigger some initiatives like switching off unnecessary motorway lighting and pointlessly keeping office blocks lit up all night? My guess is many households will still run multiple lighting in rooms and leave appliances on standby etc etc until the bills land on doormats.

This crisis ought to be ‘generating’ lists of light-bulb moments as we regard this mess as an opportunity to go a whole lot greener and cut our dreadfully wasteful habits and start to regard gas and electricity as a privilege rather than a cheap and cheerful ‘right’.

Things are going to change...adapt or die they say...I’m going to adapt.

Steve Mackinder

Denver

POLITICS

We have a female clone of Boris Johnson

Why were the Tories so desperate to implement a degree of proportional representation (PR) over the election of their leader yet are reluctant to deny PR to all voters at general elections where they actually vote on electing a government, not a personality?

Moreover, if as the mainstream media commentariat insist, it was supposedly a “fractious gruelling” contest between two Tory personalties with opposing ideals then why did defeated candidate Sunak say immediately after the result was declared that he’ll pledge his support to Truss and work with her?

The whole contest wasn’t fractious at all but nothing but a personality time wasting political diversion from the true causes of mounting economic problems which really stem from fifty years of neoliberal Tory economics which existed well before the pandemic and Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

Both Truss and Sunak endorsed the same neo-liberal system that has caused the cost of living crisis and massive social inequalities but this fake contest gave the impression the governing and opposition parties both exist in the Tory Party when neither of the candidates have any realistic political, fiscal or monetary solution to the problem.

As a result all that’s resulted is a female clone of Boris Johnson in 10 Downing Street, albeit without displaying his clownish characteristics. At the time of writing!

Nick Vinehill

via email

I have no faith in a Liz Truss Government

Hip-Hip-Hooray! The eight week (interminable) Conservative Party leadership contest is over. Now “we” (the electorate) have to count the cost...which, as we have already been warned - will be considerable.

The Conservative Party are experiencing their fourth Leader/Prime Minister in just six years.

Liz Truss won the Conservative Party Leadership contest by 81,000 to Rishi Sunak’s 60,000. From an eligible membership of (an estimated) 160,000. Less than 1% of the UK eligible voters. Is this really democracy?

For the vast majority of us not able to participate - perhaps the bigger question concerning the newly elected Leader/Prime Minister: How long before the Conservative Members of Parliament, supporters of (i) the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and, (ii) current acolytes of the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson – demand the incumbent (Liz Truss) stand-down?

Of course, time will tell.

As this unprecedented financial cost-of-living-crisis – the worst for over 50 years - makes each one of us poorer by the day, it appears one of Liz Truss’ first jobs as PM will be to try and shore-up deep, un-reconcilable divisions in her Parliamentary Party.

Before being able to tackle the enormous and serious affairs of state. Because Tory MPs will have to vote through some extremely unpalatable and costly measures. Very much against traditional Conservative Party values. So watch-out for lots of Tory abstentions when the crunch comes!

Such is this dangerous juncture – when a latter-day Thatcherite – calling herself ‘leader’ of a visibly broken political party, heading for the rocks of a recession... thinks tax cuts are the answer to thousands of ‘Food Bank Britains’ struggling for survival as winter approaches.

If ever a country needed the proven financial expertise of the person who established economic stability during the Covid-19 Lockdown – this should have been the moment when the UK was “ready for Rishi”? Unfortunately, such is the nature of the present Conservative Party’s arcane leadership voting rules, where less than 1% of this country’s voters vote, that they have deprived the whole nation of its best hope of fighting the worst financial storm in 50 years. They have achieved this by voting for the second most credible candidate put before them. Perverse or what?

From a UK plc perspective – what the Conservative membership have done in this leadership contest is “un-forgivable”. And it seems certain they will get their just reward at the next General Election. If not before?

Do we have faith in a Liz Truss government – not in a million years.

Jim Mitchell

via email

QUEEN

Newspaper pulled out all the stops

The Lynn News’ coverage of the death of our Queen last week was local journalism at its very best.

That’s the only way I can describe the coverage given by the Lynn News on Thursday evening on its web pages and then in Friday’s paper following the death of our beloved Queen Elizabeth.

The newspaper’s editorial team certainly pulled out all the stops with superb reports, local tributes and dozens of photographs – and did West Norfolk proud in mourning the loss of our monarch.

Richard Hansen

Gaywood

EDITOR: We had actually already printed Friday’s Lynn News when the news we all dreaded broke. The Lynn News team, along with colleagues across Iliffe Media Publishing, went to work straight away, finishing at 10.49pm. We considered it our duty.

IMMIGRATION

The current numbers are not sustainable

A balanced and measured response is necessitated for Susan Cox’s one sided letter in Viewpoint last Tuesday over asylum and deportations.

Britain has a compassionate track record on accepting refugees to escape persecution in their countries, and of late Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine are examples.

Nothing was said about economic migrants who could stay in other European countries without fear. Treasury is Government and the ongoing numbers are not economically sustainable, with prioritisation imperative on who to accept.

Thought has to be given to the infrastructure and the difficulty in coping with demographic upheaval. Education, housing, NHS and Social Services are under severe strain, and the race card is overplayed to subjugate and demonise alternative opinions, which maligns the compassion and tolerance of Norfolk’s citizens.

As for Rwanda, it is a humane country built on stable governance with impartial research testament to this.

Britain which is geographically small has limitations to its hospitality, compounded with the strains on the economy.

With leftists and liberals money is no object and it is our young new overseas friends who will be picking up the bill through taxation later, not exactly sound long term planning for their future.

Political Correctness is oblivious to common sense through ideological ineptitude!

It is not racist to support the Government’s Rwanda plan, but unfortunately pragmatism is a misconstrued word!

Emotive phraseology is counter productive and some of my friends from abroad loathe being patronised by the indigenous liberal assembly who they view as salaried charlatans meddling.

David Fleming

Downham