Letters: Ireland’s border antics make nonsense of the EU’s posturing on Brexit
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SIR – The Brexit process was stymied for years by claims that instituting a hard border on the island of Ireland was not only impractical, but also immoral.
The British Government was roundly condemned across America and Europe for being irresponsible and reckless, and jeopardising the Good Friday Agreement. Britain was browbeaten into conceding a bad Brexit deal, and Northern Ireland was subject to a forced customs separation from the rest of the UK, via dire threats from the EU (and later President Biden) that Britain would be held solely responsible for ending peace in Ireland and become an international pariah.
In response to a rise in arrivals of asylum seekers, the Irish government is now planning to deploy police to enforce strict border controls in Ireland (report, May 2). It turns out that a hard border isn’t so difficult or unconscionable after all. Nor does there seem to be much finger-wagging this time around from the other members of the club about the Irish government’s own careless endangerment of peace.
I don’t suppose an apology from the Remainers will be forthcoming any time soon.
Robert Frazer
Salford, Lancashire
SIR – Should the Irish government employ police to carry out front-line immigration enforcement – in effect creating the hard border the EU insisted would breach the Good Friday Agreement – I take it we will hear that great Irishman, Joe Biden, berating Dublin for its actions.
John Kennedy
Hornchurch, Essex
SIR – There is a much-lauded process in the EU called, ironically, the Dublin Regulation. This allows for asylum seekers to be returned to the first EU country through which they passed in order to process an asylum application. Surely Ireland, a proud EU member, could invoke this agreement to return its unwanted asylum seekers to the first EU country, which could be France or Italy.
Michael West
Poole, Dorset
SIR – Set against a background of millions of pounds given to France to prevent small boats arriving, and further millions given to Rwanda to facilitate the arrival of “some” migrants removed from the UK, I now understand that a single migrant flown to Rwanda has received a payment of £3,000 plus subsidies for up to five years (“First Rwanda removal a ‘con’, says Farage”, report, May 2).
My blood boils when I think of what this amount of money could do for the disadvantaged people in this country.
I agree with Nigel Farage. We are being conned by an irresponsible Government that spends our money all too freely.
Dudley Price
Wells, Somerset
Patient vs practice
SIR – I have just spent 30 minutes trying to get information from my GP, which could possibly lead to my seeing another doctor face-to-face.
First I had to get on to the practice website, share my login details with the company running the system, and complete a questionnaire asking how I had helped myself with my ailment.
I then received an appointment by text, and phoned the practice to say I couldn’t make that time and date. This involved a lengthy discussion, during which it transpired that there were no further appointments because they were all “embargoed”.
This is like being in a dystopian nightmare.
Jacqueline Butler
Macclesfield, Cheshire
SIR – My 90-year-old brother lives in Wales. He has a rather irritating cough, and on May 1 rang his GP surgery to make an appointment to discuss it. He was offered one on June 3.
“I shall either be dead or better by then,” was his response. Problem solved.
Adrian Lloyd-Edwards
Stoke Fleming, Devon
SIR – Recently I had an NHS musculoskeletal appointment for a hip problem, at which it was proposed that I have a hip replacement.
One week later I was sent a link by text that let me choose online which orthopaedic clinic to attend – one NHS and three private. Having been presented with wait times for an initial assessment and surgery at each, I chose one at a local private hospital for two weeks’ time
Am I just lucky being under the Royal Berkshire Trust? I couldn’t have asked for better service.
Chris Thomas
Reading, Berkshire
Covid vaccine pressure
SIR – Geoff Blackman (Letters, May 2) seems to have forgotten the intense pressure people were put under to be vaccinated against Covid in 2021. He describes a decision based only on personal risk analysis, which was simply not the case.
The risk was heavily exaggerated for younger age groups, with Government advertising designed to instil fear. We have evidence of this intention in Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps: “We frighten the pants off everyone”.
Then there was the near-universal condemnation of “the unvaccinated”, which amounted to a form of coercion. We should not forget that questions were being asked such as “should the unvaccinated be denied hospital treatment?”, or “should unvaccinated relatives be invited for Christmas?”
Joanna Evans
Nantgaredig, Carmarthenshire
No ‘I’ in CV
SIR – In her column on a perfect CV (Money, telegraph.co.uk, May 1), Helena Morrissey uses the following example of a positive evidence statement: “I drove efficiencies that led to a 12 per cent annualised cost saving for the department.”
As a former corporate recruiter for sales, this is the sort of statement that sends a document straight into the rejection pile.
There is no need for “I” in a CV. Who else is the document written about? Flowery sentences are not required; concise bullet points are. The more white space and the fewer words on a page, the better.
I agree with her about placing a number in each bullet point of evidence, but percentages are vague. Hard numbers are what’s required.
David Pilkington
London SW1
Electoral pride
SIR – I was proud to be the first to cast my vote at my local polling station yesterday. I am proud that I live in a democracy, and that the result will be the will of the majority of the voters.
However, for the first time in my life I’m not proud of the candidates I voted for. I know nothing about them, as they made no effort to contact me.
Politics is broken.
Chris Sparrow
Oxford
SIR – As I showed my photo ID at the polling booth yesterday, upon seeing my decade-old passport photo the lady staffing it exclaimed: “Aww, baby face!” If this isn’t an argument against voter ID, I don’t know what is.
Henry Dickinson
London N4
Faith-based admissions
SIR – I’m not sure why Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society (Letters, April 30) thinks that Catholic schools do not teach children to live harmoniously alongside one another. I could show him many Catholic schools, especially in Lancashire and Yorkshire, which have 75 per cent or more Muslim and Hindu children, as well as those of no faith.
The reason the Catholic Church has not been willing to establish new academies with the 50 per cent admissions cap is that it would have to turn away children whose parents wish them to attend a Catholic school.
Ann O’Brien
Leeds, West Yorkshire
SIR – I attended faith schools in Northern Ireland. It took a non-denominational school in England to open my eyes to the possibility that there were other equally respectable beliefs – and non-belief. A cap that ensures that a faith school has a large enough cohort of non-faith pupils – showing children that the school’s faith is one of many valid beliefs – is a valuable weapon in the fight against indoctrination of young people.
Deborah Tompkinson
Maidenhead, Berkshire
Wine in branch
SIR – When I applied, aged 18, for a bank account at the St James’s Piccadilly branch of Lloyds, I was invited to lunch by the manager (Letters, May 1).
Wine was served in the lovely panelled dining room. I must have passed muster, since I was accepted as a customer. How life has changed.
Colin Hamilton
Chichester, West Sussex
Screen adaptations that live up to the books
SIR – David Acklam (Letters, April 29) says that it is difficult to name a film that is better than the book.
Despite the liberties taken, David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) must be a contender for one of the most successful screen adaptations. Young Pip and Estella (Jean Simmons) are perfect casting. Finlay Currie as the convict Abel Magwitch, grabbing Pip on the marshes, is so terrifying that my Dad remembered gasping when he first saw it. Francis L Sullivan is inscrutable as the all-knowing lawyer Mr Jaggers, and surely Martita Hunt’s Miss Havisham remains fixed in the imagination for all time as the bride who had withered like her bridal dress.
It is two hours of rich entertainment, which remains forever etched in the memory. On balance, I’ll take the film over the book, Mr Dickens.
Ian France
Penrith, Cumbria
SIR – I agree with David Acklam that film adaptations of books generally irritate and disappoint, usually because the casting is never as the reader had imagined it. I must say, however, that the marvellous television adaptations of the Inspector Morse novels were exceptions.
Paula Macphee
Newmarket, Suffolk
The question of imbalance in BBC audiences
SIR – We recently attended a recording of Any Questions? (Letters, May 2). What a disappointment.
There seemed to have been no attempt to find a balanced audience. We could all submit a question, and these were selected by producers half an hour before it started. The panel was made up of a local Conservative MP, who looked defeated before he started, a Labour MP, a Left-wing journalist and a High Court judge.
To add insult to injury, we had been asked to get there an hour early so someone could find out what our “local issues” were, but had to listen to pop music being played over the loudspeaker for much of that time.
We couldn’t wait for it to finish and decided that it is probably time for the BBC to stop the programme altogether.
Frances Lake
Hythe, Kent
SIR – In the 1990s I went to an Any Questions? programme in Shrewsbury. The audience could sit where they liked, and during the recording there was some cheering and whooping, mostly to Left-wing questions and answers. These noisy people were sitting nearest the microphones, as they had been to such programmes before and knew the format. The quieter, well-behaved people were locals, who applauded all the answers.
Polly Hurlow
Marnhull, Dorset
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