No EU turn
Sir: Before Dr Brian Mathew’s letter on ‘How to restore prosperity’ appeared (10 January), the FT printed an article making it clear that Britain’s powerful financial services industry would not be included in the government’s much-vaunted ‘reset’ with the EU. It quoted figures from the City saying that this was ‘the last thing they wanted’ and explaining they were doing much better outside EU regulation. The article contained a reported comment from the government to the effect that they had taken note of the City’s views and that financial services would not now be included in their cherished initiative. It may be worth recalling here that Ed Davey was vociferous in predicting the City’s swift demise once we left the EU, but in fact it has gone from strength to strength. Indeed the whole services sector, about 80 per cent of the UK’s economy, seems to be faring well enough on the outside.
John Murray
Guildford, Surrey
Manifesto destiny
Sir: Tim Shipman reports on Danny Kruger and Zia Yusuf’s concerns about recalcitrant peers blocking Reform’s legislative programme (‘Stormy seas’, 10 January), but if the Reform and Conservative general election manifestos converge, as they surely will, does not the problem go some way to solving itself?
Lord Strathcarron
House of Lords, London SW1
Voters betrayed
Sir: The head-spinning plans Danny Kruger is preparing to put before the electorate at the next election will also be viewed in the context of who is promoting them. Will the public be persuaded Nigel Farage is a man who should be PM, given his stated admiration of Vladimir Putin’s ability to ‘control’ Russia, his support of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, and his questionable behaviour at Dulwich College? Kruger, having criticised Reform UK only weeks before he defected, disenfranchised the 16,849 people who voted for a Conservative MP at the last election. Reform came fourth in his constituency. Does ‘trustworthy’ feature in their offering?
Sandra Jones
Old Cleeve, Somerset
Massacre of the innocents
Sir: Once abortion up to the point of birth has been conceded, the particular horror of foetal femicide is emotionally resonant but logically irrelevant (‘The lost girls’, 10 January). In the UK, abortion is permitted on the grounds that continuing the pregnancy will cause injury to the mother. In many cultures, having a girl rather than a boy can do that. The real issue here is not femicide but allowing the destruction of fully viable babies, regardless of the reason.
Matthew Hosier
Poole, Dorset
Ultimate turn-off
Sir: I consider myself a ‘zillennial’, a slightly pretentious term for those who want to be millennials but who fall into the Gen Z age category. As I read Mary Wakefield’s article ‘No sex please, we’re Gen Z’ (10 January), one thing occurred to me as an obvious reason why Gen Z are not having sex. Very simply, they’re too busy on their phones. The issue isn’t just sex: it’s all kinds of human connection. Friendships, family relationships, and yes, sexual relationships too. Scrolling aimlessly on TikTok and watching porn is much easier, safer and more familiar for Gen Z than forming real relationships. Many of them (or should I say ‘us’?) have had phones since we were kids: they have been our one constant companion.
As a soon-to-be Anglican cleric, thinking about how to navigate the smartphone crisis and its effect on human relationships is going to be a priority of mine.
Jacob Wigley
Oxford
Writing White
Sir: Lynn Barber’s review of Jenny Uglow’s wonderful book sings the virtues of Gilbert White, but is unfair in dismissing Uglow’s achievement (Books, 13 December). A Year with Gilbert White does not simply print White’s notes from one year. The bulk of it is made up from White’s notes for each day or month, but drawing upon his observations from many different years. This layering creates the interest and joy to be found in keeping meticulous records: the interest of comparison, and the joy of memory.
There is however one oversight. Very oddly, given the passionately parochial nature of The Natural History of Selborne, the nuthatch chosen for the cover of the book is not an English species. It has pale blue-white streaks around its eyes, rather than a black ‘mask’. The beautiful painting is indeed by an appropriately English and appropriately 18th-century artist, James Bolton; and the note under the corresponding illustration states that it is from Bolton’s Harmonia Ruralis: a guide to English songbirds, dedicated ‘To the British Ladies’, with engravings drawn from life. But there is no nuthatch in that book.
The image is actually a painting of a ‘curiosity’ from the Natural History Cabinet of Anna Blackburne. It was presumably extrapolated from a skin (which would account for the un-nuthatch-like posture). The Yale Centre of British Art, where the painting is held, identifies the specimen as Sitta formosa, the Beautiful Nuthatch. This in itself is interesting, as the painting, c. 1768, predates by about 75 years the official ‘discovery’ of the bird by Edward Blyth.
Caroline Moore
Etchingham, East Sussex
Electric dreams
Sir: Matthew Parris’s paean to the ‘climate emergency’ (10 January) makes the transition to all-electric sound like a future nobody could object to: ‘a joy to drive’ electric car that goes 160 miles (my old Honda does nearly three times that); heat pumps purring away ‘almost noiselessly’ – love the ‘almost’; a cleaner, healthier country. What’s not to like?
Well, around the UK, thousands of farmland acres of good, rich soil will no longer cultivate food but instead sprout steel supports, ballast foundations and silicon solar panels. From Norfolk to Essex, swaths of the countryside are to be defiled by thousands of tons of emissions-producing concrete bases on which will stand 35m-tall pylons. Windfarms whose blades slaughter thousands of seabirds stand on massive pads sunk into the seabed, disturbing ancient lobster and crab-fishing grounds.
As for ‘nasty despots’ controlling our fossil fuel power, from whom does Matthew think we’re buying those solar panels and windmills?
Mick Wharton
Cookley, Suffolk
Paper cuts
Sir: I accept Arthur Kay’s point about bookshop ownership, but feel compelled to defend my local, Southwold Books, against some of his other arguments (‘Breaking cover’, 10 January). The shop has a lively and well-stocked local interest section and actively encourages local authors to submit their work. This is a local response to a much bigger argument, but it would be a shame if the work of the Southwold Books team were swept up in it. When it opened, both of our much-loved independent bookshops had already closed. Without Southwold Books, we would have no bookshop at all. We are fortunate to have it.
Erika Clegg
Southwold, Suffolk
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