Why are we not donating Covid vaccines that are about to expire?

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Why are we holding on to more vaccines than we can possibly use? (Getty/iStock)

Gordon Brown highlights that the UK and other governments have vast stockpiles of vaccines that are fast approaching their sell-by date and destined for landfill, while at the same time many countries have none. We know that no one is safe until all are safe. Hopefully, he will be listened to.

Why are we holding on to more vaccines than we can possibly use? Surely enlightened self-interest says we should urgently get it into the arms of people in less developed countries as “no one is safe until we are all safe” – this will protect us from variants.

Is our culture and most others based solely on acquisitiveness? Deep down do we all subscribe to “greed is good”? If so, it could explain why we hoard vaccines we cannot use and it might also explain the lack of commitment by rich nations ahead of Cop26 to transfer funds to enable poorer countries to tackle climate change, which if not tackled head-on will be disastrous for us all.

Without fundamental cultural changes, the pandemic is set to run and run, global warming will continue to the point where there is little hope for mankind and inequality will grow. It’s not a future I want to bequeath to my children and grandchildren.

John Simpson

Ross-on-Wye

Culture wars

The 29 October 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Jimmy Savile.

When he died in 2011 Savile had numerous public monuments in his honour. A Street in Scarborough was named “Savile’s View” and the Savile’s Hall centre in Leeds. A wooden statue of Savile stood outside the Scotstoun Leisure Centre in Glasgow. Savile was buried in a grave with a £4,000 headstone set above it bearing his image and listing his charitable works, and a gold plaque to honour him was put on his former home.

Less than a year after his death, Savile’s crimes as a serial rapist, abuser, paedophile and necrophile became public knowledge.

For decades Savile had used the networks he built through his charity work, his celebrity status as a familiar face on the BBC and his friendships with top people in the British establishment to prey on young girls and boys. It is probable that Savile sexually assaulted and abused up to 500 people during his lifetime, including children as young as eight.

When Savile’s crimes became public knowledge the monuments to him were swiftly removed. On 2 October 2012 the statue of Savile at the Scotstoun Centre was removed and destroyed. Savile’s name was deleted from the Leeds hall. The street named “Savile’s View” was changed. The gold plaque on his home was taken down and Savile’s family authorised the removal of his ornate headstone “out of respect to public opinion”.

No rational person in public life spoke in defence of Savile’s monuments or argued their removal was “cancelling culture”.

No one argued that Savile’s “philanthropy” mitigated his obscene crimes or insisted that monuments to Savile should remain standing as they were part of “history”. No one said that those who took down Savile’s monuments were “baying mobs” of “woke worthies” who wanted to see “Britain’s history be cancelled”.

But 10 years on from Savile’s death and these are the arguments the government is using in defence of statues and monuments which honour British slavers. After Black Lives Matter activists tore down the statue of the Bristol slaver Edward Colston in June 2020, the government moved quickly to protect other monuments of slavers. Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary at the time, personally intervened to ensure that the statue of the 17th century slaver Robert Geffrye remained in Hoxton’s Museum of the Home, irrespective of the expressed wishes of the people of Hackney. 

This was the first salvo in the government’s “culture war” in defence of the indefensible – monuments to evil men who made fortunes from trafficking human beings. As culture secretary, Dowden issued a diktat that museums “must defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down”. His replacement as culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, has condemned “left-wing snowflakes” for “tearing down historic statues”.

Home secretary Priti Patel has gone as far as to include a clause in her draconian police and crime bill, which could mean a prison sentence of up to 10 years for anyone caught trying to overturn a statue of a slaver.

Monuments to Jimmy Savile were rightly taken down when his vile crimes against hundreds of innocents were exposed. Monuments to criminals like William Beckford, Sir John Cass and Robert Geffrye, men who profited from a “trade” that enslaved and brutalised more than 12 million over 400 years, not only still stand but are defended by the Tory government.

Their attempts to substitute Tory myths for actual history and obscure the bloody roots of the British establishment will not succeed.

The slavers will fall.

Sasha Simic

London

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Climate hypocrisy

The hypocrisy of many nations in their attitude to the climate crisis was highlighted to me by a report of President Biden’s visit to the Pope during which he was to discuss the issue.

He arrived in a convoy of 80 large vehicles, many of which had reportedly been flown in from the USA.

Not exactly showing the world a good example.

Michael Pate

Preston

Forget the vulnerable

In his Budget, Rishi Sunak has completely wiped out the most vulnerable in society – the pensioners. Being at home most of the day with heating costs soaring, and living on one of the lowest state pensions in the western world, we don’t seem to exist to Mr Sunak. Other countries look after their pensioners, but not England.

Helen Rowland

Harwich, Essex

Selfish democracy

On the climate crisis, everyone is expecting someone else to do something so nothing much will happen. All the planned economies failed because an individual manager cannot make the myriad of decisions that are required in a plan that organises the resources. 

Market economies succeed because greed drives that decision-making and the markets balance out the supply of resources to meet that greed. A carbon tax is all that is needed to get the markets to drive the different supply chains that are needed to eliminate fossil fuels. 

A steadily growing tax rate would give time for the adjustments. The tax revenues would fund the transitions and cushion the pain. A carbon tax can be imposed unilaterally. The only obstacle is democracy – there is always an outcry when fossil fuel prices go up. That is the selfishness that has to be overcome. Everyone has to try tax and give momentum to the transition, in time energy will come down in price as we find different ways to exploit the supply from the sun.

Jon Hawksley

France