We have still not seen the worst effects of Brexit

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

David Frost looks on as Boris Johnson prepares to sign the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement in 2020 (PA)

As we mark the end of the first year of new trade terms between the UK and EU, the predicted negative impacts of Brexit on the economy and on living standards are becoming clearer.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, it has been estimated that the UK economy will be roughly 4 per cent worse off than it would have been had the 2016 EU referendum gone the other way. As of October, the latest month for which data is available, UK imports and exports were 15.7 per cent below the level that could have been expected had the UK not left the EU’s customs union and single market in January. In parallel with this, the ending of freedom of labour has led to much-publicised shortages of lorry drivers, farm labourers and abattoir workers.

Reinforced with the impacts of Covid-19, this has seen UK growth lag behind the US and the eurozone. Gross domestic product in the UK was 3.9 per cent higher in the third quarter of 2021 than in the second quarter of 2016. Over the same period the eurozone produced 6.2 per cent growth and the US 10.6 per cent.

Brexit has had a devastating impact on the UK economy, which has to an extent been masked by Covid- 9. As the pandemic recedes, these impacts will become obvious for all to see, and the economic madness that is Brexit will be fully exposed.

Alex Orr

Edinburgh

The Hunting Act doesn’t go far enough

Elisa Allen’s list of improvements in animal welfare (‘Au revoir fois gras: 10 big wins for animals this year’, 25 December) is indeed something for animal rights campaigners like me to feel happy about among the very dark and disturbing reports of hideous cruelty that come through to us on a daily basis.

However, I would like to make one point. She hopes fox hunters will “take up alternative activities that don’t involve tormenting and killing animals”. Well, as a hunt monitor with nearly three decades of experience, I can tell her that they won’t. The last 15 years since the Hunting Act was introduced have proved that, in no uncertain terms.

In my opinion, and that of the majority of anti-hunt campaigners, hunting with dogs must be banned outright – no exceptions, no exemptions. Any other outcome will involve them cheating and lying and continuing to persecute our defenceless wildlife, one devious way or another.

Penny Little

Oxfordshire

Write off sexist Christmas cards

Thank you Emily Roberts for highlighting an issue that may seem trivial but has been bugging me for the 37 years that I’ve been married (‘How you address a Christmas card can cause great offence to women’, 25 December).

Unlike Emily, I did not change my name. I was never “Mrs”. After a while I changed from “Miss” (schoolgirl in pigtails or maiden aunt) to “Ms” (bolshy feminist – yep, and proud of it!). I didn’t even adopt the hybrid of “maiden name professionally, married name everywhere else”, as I thought that would be confusing.

So... very simple, and yet there are people who still, after all these years of receiving cards with both our names on the return label, not to mention invitations, notes etc all in my name, insist on addressing us as “Mr and Mrs X”, or as Emily highlights, addressing me as “Mrs ‘his first and second name’”.

Aargh! There are people who continue to do this by habit or tradition, so I tend to give people from an older generation a pass. But what really gets me are women of my generation who have themselves kept their own names but who insist on addressing me by my husband’s name. So I have made a resolution that some time during 2022 I will have a polite conversation with the offenders to let them know how I prefer to be addressed. Then any cards that arrive incorrectly addressed for Christmas 2022 will be unceremoniously returned to sender.

Anne Wolff

Maidenhead, Berkshire

Emily Roberts is upset that Christmas cards arrive addressed in only her husband’s name and surmises that it is because she took her husband’s name when they married. She can rest assured that it isn’t. My wife kept her own name but still the cards arrive addressed to “Mr and Mrs Michael O’Hare”,  even from family members and friends to whom we have specifically requested otherwise. Irritated, my wife puts them all in a pile and says to me, “those are the ones for you and your mum”.

Michael O’Hare

Northwood, Middlesex

Too much for England’s batsmen

To learn this morning that, despite all the fighting talk beforehand, the England cricket team has yet again failed to make a competitive score in a Test match is not only very disappointing but also puzzling. It seems as if, for several years now, England has been unable to field a Test side where, with the exception of one or two individuals, the top order batsman actually card decent scores. I’ve not studied the statistics but it is no longer a rare phenomenon that the tail-end of the batting order accrues more runs than the so-called specialists.

So what is going so wrong that England can produce such mediocrity with such alarming consistency in this format of the game when in the shorter formats the England squad leads the world? Still regarded by many as the purest form of professional cricket, the Test match requires not only batsmen of exceptional skill and shedloads of patience but also a level of concentration that doctors might be tempted to identify as some kind of medical disorder. The England camp undoubtedly has players with the necessary batting skills but they are clearly lacking in the other vital qualities.

Is it simply a sad truth that even though different players are selected for the different formats, albeit with some overlap, the current generation of batting professionals actually prefer the limited overs formats and as such are no longer minded to plug away at the crease for hours when the shorter game allows them to swing the bat from the very first delivery?

I am evermore inclined to think that in the UK at least it is not only the viewing public that prefers the drama and instant gratification of a T20 match but the players themselves who on balance get a greater return for, let’s face it, less effort.

J Wells

Alresford, Hampshire