Dominic Cummings should pay the £10,000 fines for student snowball fight

letters@independent.co.uk

Dominic Cummings, former special adviser to the prime minister, visited Barnard Castle during a national lockdown (Getty Images)

I saw the report that two university students have been fined £10,000 each for organising a snowball fight involving 200 fellow students.

As you will recall, when ex-chief advisor Dominic Cummings broke lockdown rules last year he barely received a slap on the wrist, courtesy of the government’s generous intervention. And now the police are imposing a £10,000 fine on two students for organising a snow fight. Are you kidding me? Has this government completely lost its mind?

The government’s former chief adviser blatantly broke the law in front of the entire country and nothing happens. A couple of kids who are already paying the highest university fees ever (imposed by the hand of a previous Tory government) are subsequently subjected to a fine greater than an entire year’s worth of tuition. This comes at a time when tens of thousands of university students have had their education disrupted to the point where many have dropped out and those that remain might as well have stayed at home and skipped the year altogether.

These are kids who are reeling from the chaos of the government’s initial Covid-19 response, the so-called “herd immunity” approach (that worked out well, didn’t it?), and its ongoing aftermath. They are not government advisers or ministers who set policy and then ignore it, considering themselves exempt from laws us mere mortals are expected to uphold. Are we living in Russia? Did I miss something? And as you are likely aware, it was Dom himself who most vocally championed a £10,000 pound fine – for anyone apart from himself, of course.

My suggestion: reduce the fine immediately to £50 or £100 maximum. Or better still, get Dom to pay the £10,000 fine for each of these foolish young students, because foolish they are, but they DO NOT deserve such an absurd penalty.

Felice Loncraine

London

Moanalot

So Jacob Rees Mogg calls Nicola Sturgeon “Moanalot”. This must be his way of proving how up to date he is, taking his reference from the charlady character from the 1940s BBC radio comedy show It's That Man Again – Mona Lott. He really is switched on!

Patrick Cleary

Gloucestershire

Forgotten disabled

You frequently report the difficulties black and ethnic minorities face in accessing the Covid-19 vaccine, but there is a gaping hole in the vaccine implementation plan when it comes to the housebound disabled.

Those who are sheltering at home with carers visiting daily to help them with personal hygiene, dressing and food are at risk as much as any care home resident or 80 year old. I have a friend in Lambeth who is disabled and housebound with daily carers and she cannot get vaccinated. The excuses are that the Pfizer vaccine cannot be delivered at home because of the cool temperatures it has to be kept in, and that there is no Oxford Zeneca vaccine available. 

Her GP and local authority are aware of her condition, but have failed to help her get a vaccination. If the government could just once mention priority for the disabled that might make a difference.

Bobbie Vincent-Emery

London

Political future

However irritating Scottish and Irish issues can sometimes seem to the English, before Brexit the general consensus would have been that it was in no one’s interest to break up the UK. But the Scots have always displayed a greater sense of national political and cultural identity than the English, and their overwhelming support for staying within the EU has raised serious doubts about the democratic legitimacy of the whole Brexit project. At the same time, the changing demographics of Northern Ireland are ineluctably edging its politics towards Irish reunion.

Scotland would probably be worse off economically at least to start with. But the mere fact of independence would stimulate its traditional business skills and go-gettingness and reverse the trend identified by Dr Samuel Johnson’s famous quote: “The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England” (and, one might add, to the rest of the world). It will result in the entrepreneurial Scots devoting more of their ingenuity and energy to their homeland.

Irish reunion would inevitably pose many problems, but in the longer term would be likely to lead to fewer domestic tensions and a greater prosperity for the whole island of Ireland. Wales by contrast might for practical reasons have to retain some formal economic links with England.

But Mary Dejevsky is right, with the break-up of the UK being less unimaginable than it once was, it is surely time for the English to be thinking more about what might be its future political structures, and its place in the world on its own; although one can understand why English politicians do not want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by even mentioning the prospect of a break-up.

Gavin Turner

Norfolk 

Control on air travel

The UK government raised people’s expectations that the vaccine is the way out of the pandemic. This is giving people a false sense of security leading to irresponsible behaviour like the over-50s who rushed to book their holidays due to “vaccine confidence”.

The government aims to vaccinate the top four groups but it is too early to know the effectiveness of the vaccine and whether the government made the right call over the gap between vaccinations and if the vaccine stops the transmission of the virus. This is a worry as much of the population hasn’t been vaccinated.

We don’t know how the vaccine will respond to new mutations. The UK government needs tighter controls on air travel. Otherwise, the surge in overseas holidays could again result in accelerating the infection rate and risk introducing new deadly variants into the UK escalating the death rate further out of control and plummeting the UK economy into a deeper recession.

Jeannette Schael

Hampshire

Brexit blame

Samantha Cameron, who owns a fashion business, bewails the fact that it is difficult to trade with the EU.

It was her husband who called for a referendum which is causing this unnecessary pandemonium, so she should berate him not whine through the media.

David Cameron must shoulder much of the blame for Brexit and the future downward spiral of Britain’s living standards, employment opportunities and world standing. Mr Cameron and his party are responsible for the disastrous decision to allow the referendum. Without that monumentally detrimental decision, Britain would be experiencing, notwithstanding Covid-19, a much more stable, comfortable lifestyle.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke