A point worth making about the activities of Knepp in West Sussex is that the estate manages to combine conservation with visitors and some food production, thus helping fund its activities while assisting food security (“Pioneering rewilding project faces ‘catastrophe’ from plan for new houses”, News). Purists might argue for a more fundamentalist approach but is this realistic?
Environmentalists a few decades ago reckoned three or four fully used planets would be needed for everyone to have western lifestyles and jobs to afford them; a more recent estimate was 11, based on well-off US living standards, while rehoming climate refugees will apply further pressure. Combining conservation with careful use seems more likely to salvage something from the wreckage; tribal people have known that for millennia. As long as conventional economic wisdom boils down to “make more money, buy more stuff”, though, the natural world will be in desperate trouble.
Ian Climie
Whitchurch, Hants
Are we really going to put a few rare insects above the need for housing? The 3,500 new homes at the Knepp estate are sorely needed. We have a housing crisis. Let the campaigners put the insects and rodents in their own gardens. This is typical protest by comfortable “nimbys” who are probably most worried about the price of their own precious houses. Let them visit a family in a hostel and tell them they would prefer to give a home to mosquitoes.
Angela Donnelly
Cambridge
Cruel and stupid deportation
Congratulations to Mark Townsend on his story about Charles Oti (“Specialist Covid infection control scientist faces deportation threat”, News). Oti is alleged to lack the correct documentation. What does it matter, weighed against all that he has done, and is eager to do, in contributing his knowledge and commitment to help fight Covid?
He is clearly highly intelligent and highly qualified. We need him here and should be delighted that he wants to continue to work for our wonderful NHS. The idea of deporting him is not only cruel, but gobsmackingly stupid. I have written to my MP asking him to use his influence against the Home Office in this case. I wish every reader would do the same.
Penelope Maclachlan
Hanwell, London
A tale of two parliaments
How much I agree with Rowan Moore’s characterisation of the new press room at Downing Street as “Nuremberg Radisson” (Notebook, Comment). It is the perfect stylistic expression of the mentality of the government in living in an imagined past. In contrast, it has been a pleasure to see the elegant and progressive setting of Enric Miralles’ poetic architecture of the Scottish parliament building at Holyrood, as the backdrop to the shenanigans that have been taking place there.
Dean Hawkes
Cambridge
I’m a believer
With reference to Harriet Sherwood’s article, of course declaring oneself as Christian as against “going to church” are two separate issues for many of us (“Less than half of Britons expected to tick “Christian” in snapshot of the nation”, News). As a gay man, who talks to his God most days, I have long felt excluded from the established church and have not attended for many years. However, when answering the question “What is your religion?”, I still affirmed my Christian belief.
Jonathan Griffiths
Poole
Combine bike and rail
Your article “Mind the gaps: will we go back to public transport after Covid?” (Business) was concerned that the rise in cycling would lead to insufficient numbers of people using trains. One possible solution would be for the rail companies, which have in recent years taken an apparent delight in making a combined bike and rail journey hardly worth attempting, to cash in on the increased popularity of cycling and reintroduce the guard’s van.
Nicky Coates
Bristol
Take a stand on pipeline
Further to the article by Simon Tisdall (“Biden must punish Putin’s cyber-attacks”, Foreign Affairs Commentary), in relation to the ineffectiveness of sanctions against Russia over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, the geopolitical debate in Germany has been muddied by the insertion of a moral dimension. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared that German support for the dual pipeline, which circumvents Poland and Ukraine and supplies gas directly under the Baltic Sea to Germany, is dictated by the need to atone for wartime German crimes against Russia.
Of course, Germany should display a sense of guilt towards Russia for these crimes, but not as a justification for isolating Poland and Ukraine to whom Germany has a similar, if not an even greater, moral debt. It is time that the UK took a similar stand to the US government on sanctions over this pipeline.
Wiktor Moszczynski, spokesman, Federation of Poles in Great Britain
Brentford, London
Bring back the school nurse
I was delighted to read the article “Nurse in all schools ‘would help child mental health toll’” (News).
As an in-house education welfare officer in a secondary school, I worked very closely with the school nurse and she was invaluable in offering confidential guidance and support to students, from friendship problems, family issues and mental health concerns to encouraging good dietary habits. I recommended the school to buy in her services full time but sadly this was not affordable.
School nursing services have been eroded massively, to the point of them being there for vaccination programmes only. I am certain that having a full-time in-house nurse would pay dividends in improved student welfare and morale. Such a scheme would require the government to provide funding but would be money well spent.
Eleanor Reeves
Altrincham
Cauliflower curry to die for
I am a great fan of Madhur Jaffrey, followed her TV series religiously and have several of her curry-stained books on my shelves, but I couldn’t let Jay Rayner’s encomium go by without a nod to another star of Indian cookery, Mrs Balbir Singh (“Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery was not only a brilliant cookbook but a guide to another world”, Magazine). We came across her book Mrs Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery in Aigburth library in Liverpool in 1974 and are now on our third copy. I recommend the whole cauliflower curry and the pork vindaloo.
She trained in the UK in the 50s and eventually went back to India, where she became the Julia Child of Indian TV. Some of her grandchildren live in west London and have started a website. Interested TV producers might start there.
Chris Wallis
Marple, Stockport