Letter: Forget Brexit, we have bigger problems

SIR – I have noticed that, before and since Brexit, your letters page has received a considerable body of correspondence from proponents and opponents of that issue. It would appear that most of the correspondence is from a small handful of letter writers, none of whom have yet appeared to change the mind of their opponents. I do not recall a single letter writer suddenly saying his views were wrong and the views of their opponents were correct.

We are now faced with the possibility of World War III. This view may be decried, but I do recommend a book entitled ‘The Sleepwalkers’ by Christopher Clark, showing how the Great Powers fell into the First World War.

Even if that horror is avoided, we have the horrendous Ukraine refugee situation to resolve.

At home, we have a government hell bent on an absurd net zero programme. The zealots seem quite happy to have the ordinary citizen throw out their gas boilers which provide hot water and heat their homes, and replace them, at great expense, with misnamed heat exchangers which do not provide hot water or warm the house.

We are being told we should buy – at enormous cost and which many cannot afford – electric cars. I cannot see that the government has publicised the fact that the rare metal elements for the car batteries are being extracted by child labour in the Congo, or otherwise sourced by Chinese controlled outputs.

I have not yet seen the government proposals for recycling old car batteries.

We are also told that these wonderful electric cars can be charged quickly and easily from home. Who is going to provide this electricity?

Wind and solar power is a complete blind alley. It is expensive, destructive of the landscape, and does not function when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.

We need fracking, open cast coal mining and extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea until such time as nuclear power is fully up and running; although even then, we will need gas to heat our homes.

So, please, may the Brexit correspondents declare a truce and allow us to get on with the real problems facing this country.

Ian Davis,
New Milton