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Your support makes all the difference.I can see why a civil servant, when looking to focus on parts of a town for enhanced lockdown restrictions, would look at wards. After all, wards make neat divisions.
However, the flaw in this approach is that the majority of people do not know what ward they live in because the majority of people do not participate in local elections.
I suggest identifying an area by geographical features, or simply list streets.
John Harrison
Chorley, Lancashire
Refugee help
I agree with Rachel Shabi that the tragic and dire crossings by migrants are seen by the home secretary and her right-wing colleagues as a good diversionary tactic for removing the attention away from all their other ills.
It is subtle as a sledgehammer when she appoints a “clandestine Channel threat commander”; what sort of title is that?
Of course people-smugglers must be curtailed at all costs but we are not being “overrun” by asylum seekers, who are often denigrated for seeking a better life, and more importantly a safer one.
I watched the excellent BBC One documentary series Once Upon a Time in Iraq and it certainly opened my eyes to the suffering of men, women and children in such situations.
Shabi is right: we have been here so many times before but until this government desists from whipping up fear, changing the hearts and minds of many will be sadly almost impossible.
Judith A Daniels
Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
Educational need
Our natural world has never faced so many manmade challenges and threats. The creation of a Welsh natural history GCSE is now needed more than ever before. We must give future generations the skills and knowledge that will enable them to tackle many of these global issues.
Re-engagement with the natural world must become a priority of the Welsh government. We cannot rely on the Westminster government to lead the way, Wales can and must lead the way in preparing our children with the tools needed to tackle the climate emergency and species extinction crises.
The call for a natural history GCSE was first led by Mary Colwell who believed that currently young people in the UK do not engage with nature enough and this affects both conservation and wellbeing. Sadly the UK government has ignored her call.
We must teach young people about the global threats of an expanding population; pesticide and herbicide use; land, water and air pollution; the climate emergency; soil loss; intensive farming vs organic farming; habitat loss; invasive species; species extinction and biodiversity loss; over-fishing; single-use plastics; deforestation and so, so much more.
We must teach that our lives today and tomorrow are entwined with having a vibrant, abundant and healthy natural world, hence the creation of a petition.
Rob Curtis
Barry, Wales
National Trust
The National Trust wants to reduce journey times for visitors to its properties. For most people the bulk of the distance travelled to visit properties, other than those few close to one’s home, involves the journey from home to the region of the country one is visiting on holiday or during a short break away from home.
How on earth does the National Trust think it can reduce those journey lengths? Or is the National Trust going to deny people who do not live within a particular radius of the post code of each property?
J Longstaff
Buxted, East Sussex
Testing matters
Adam Forrest reports that the Independent Sage group has called for all students to have regular testing for Covid-19. Why not test the whole population on a regular basis?
This would pre-empt further expensive large-scale lockdowns and reassure most of the population that it was safe to go about our normal lives – and so enable a wider reopening of the economy, increasing productivity and so offsetting the costs of testing. It would also enable tourists coming into the country or returning from holiday to be told if they had to quarantine or not.
But are the tests reliable enough to do this? And, if not, why are we testing at all?
Peter Cole
Alnwick, Northumberland
Brexit Blues
Even government ministers who were most committed to Brexit must now be realising that leaving the EU was not such a good idea. Their problem is that having misled the British people for so long they can’t be seen to change their minds – so they stagger on.
Roger Hinds
Surrey
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