We voted to leave the European Union, just deal with it

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

I cannot believe you whinging Remainers. We had a vote to leave the EU full stop. We also understood what it meant and what we voted for to Leave and not still ruled by the EU and all the self-interests of the political elite.

Why can’t you accept this? If we had a general election and god forbid Labour won would you be asking for a rerun because you realised they would bankrupt the country? No!

So why are you asking with Brexit, after we’re promised we would get whatever the result is? Leave won!

No wonder people don’t believe a word the useless politicians say. Most of your lot said if we didn’t join the euro currency our whole economy would be ruined. But again what happened? We were fine and did better than most.

If we don’t leave this corrupt club you, The Independent, and the politicians will feel the wrath of the people who think you are all traitors to our country and to our democracy.

Steve Hawkes
Address supplied

It would be a terrible thing to normalise war

Regarding your article: “Normalising war in the classroom”

What an abhorrent idea to have war promulgated in our classrooms.

To dress up war, the killing of innocent people, as a worthwhile job is an awful indictment of just how far down the spiral of oblivion we have fallen.

Allowing these warmonger companies into the classroom because they fund various activities in the community is like allowing a wolf into the compound because it likes eating meat. We shouldn’t dress this up as anything else than conditioning our children into believing that war is “normal”.

Is there any reason to allow the likes of Thales, BAE, etc indoctrinate our young children and teenagers into the ways of killing and warfare? Our schools would serve the education of our children better if they taught restraint, peaceful negotiation and diplomacy, rather than how to kill those with whom we don’t agree.

This is a worrying departure from the ethos of education. We should be educating for the good of mankind and not to increase our ability to wage war.

Keith Poole
Basingstoke

Some recommendations for your article

I read your “food halls” article in The Independent. Surprisingly one of the originals, “The Goods Shed”, isn’t mentioned. It’s been there for 16 or so years in Canterbury. Excellent restaurant and good food for sale, still. The author must have either never heard of it, or is only interested in new ones.

Across the channel, has she ever been to the one in Rotterdam? Even that one is probably too old for the author. Not impressed.

Tom Van Den Bergh
Tunbridge Wells

Hopefully the EU scraps daylight saving hours

The seasonal clock change is a relic of a previous era. It has no place with the technological advances of the 21st century. It causes confusion twice a year and has passed its sell by date. The reasons for this time change are now obsolete. With the progress of technology, the energy-saving ritual has become irrelevant. The agricultural community also says clock changes are disruptive to farm animals. This ritual needs to be changed now.

The main idea behind clock changing was to harmonise the hours of activity with those of daylight to limit the use of artificial lighting. The twice-yearly changing of the clocks for winter and summer has been a ritual in Europe since 1916, originally conceived as an energy-saving measure. But over the years many countries have abandoned the switch and now the European Union says it will recommend abolishing it altogether in a forthcoming proposal to the European parliament.

US statesman Benjamin Franklin is credited today with coming up with the idea for clock changes in 1784, in a satirical essay published in the Journal de Paris in which he called on France to bring the start of the day back by an hour to cut back on using candles. The establishment of the twice yearly change – one hour forward in the summer, one hour back in winter – was adopted in 1916 by the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, to save on electricity during the First World War. The same year the British empire and France also introduced the clock changes. But the clocks stay the same all year round in Africa, apart from in Morocco, and in many countries in Asia.

The British government should take the lead in bringing about this much needed change in UK.

Baldev Sharma
Harrow, London

Any tips?

Travelling to Australia to demonstrate against Nigel Farage seems to me rather expensive so I have opted for Ireland in November instead.

My anti-Trump banners still look in good condition and I am pleased with the minor repairs. The only problem I now face is do I go on the ferry or fly; after all they are rather large and cumbersome banners and the risk of damage I fear is considerable for checked-in luggage on an aeroplane.

I wonder what route other readers would take?

Robert Boston
Kingshill

Double standards, much?

I don’t remember Theresa May describing the 2017 general election as “a gross betrayal of our democracy”, even though the electorate was asked to vote on the same question that they had two years previously in the 2015 general election (May insists she won’t let Brussels push her around).

John Coppendale
Cambridge

We could learn some lessons from New Zealand

I wonder whether we could persuade New Zealand to bring PM Jacinda Arden to the UK for a while? Her manifest care for the people of her country, especially the more disadvantaged, and realisation that “hostile” welfare and immigration policies just create more suffering for all would be a welcome change to the arrogant, self-serving, vicious and frankly incompetent approach of our current leaders.

Mike Margetts
Kilsby

We need to do more than enforce GDPR to look after people’s data

In response to your article (Data breach complains up 160 per cent since GDPR came into force), in my opinion the data from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) does not necessarily show the full picture.

We can no longer say, “the storm is coming”. Change is already here, and it’s having an impact that businesses can’t afford to ignore. Since the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on 25 May, there have been numerous reports of high-profile data breaches in various industries.

In your article it states that the ICO received 6,281 complaints between 25 May and 3 July. That’s three times as many notices of data breaches than the previous year. Businesses are rightly concerned about regulatory enforcement, along with customer reaction, and therefore I imagine that many data breaches are still not being reported due to fear of reputational damage.

In my opinion, GDPR is a very good starting point. The rise in notifications only emphasises the importance of such regulations. However, there is still work to be done, the focus on it must remain strong and additional clarification is required.

Phil Beckett, managing director of disputes and investigations, Alvarez and Marsal
London EC2M