Letters to the Lincolnshire Free Press editor: February 16, 2021
He didn’t furnish us with all the facts
Whilst I do understand that farmers and growers are at the mercy of our climate – unfortunately it’s the way it is and it’s uncertainties are widely known.
Chris Carter’s comments about seed treatments (Word on the Ground, January 26) paint a misleading picture around the way they work.
He rightly points out the seed is put in the ground and that bees do not burrow by nature – they are also unlikely to be seen on the UK sugar beet crop because usually it does not flower.
However, the active ingredient in this neonicotinoid seed treatment is water soluble and systemic in its mode of action and so can be absorbed by plants that can and do flower and are pollinated by insects, including bees.
That is why neonicotinoids and some other plant protection products CAN harm bees and other pollinating insects.
He quite rightly points out that scientists deal in facts not supposition.
However, please tell us ALL the facts not just the ones that suit the particular point of view.
John Constable
Spalding
They are all hell-bent on denigrating our past
It would appear that John Hayes calling out of “Woke” has touched some raw nerves – good.
Maybe they don’t really understand what it means, or they fear being left behind in this new extreme cult of “barking mad political correctness?”.
Over the years the word ‘Woke’ has become a generic slang term, which the silent majority could be forgiven for defining as “extreme political correctness”.
Many of these Wokists have become part of a “frothing at the mouth” militia, that is hell bent on denigrating our past, undermining free speech and teaching the ludicrous mantra that all white people are racist.
They thrive on racial and social division and in doing so have become part of the problem, rather than the solution.
It is sad that this word, which once had real meaning, has been hijacked by the hard left and militant extremists.
This includes the Black Lives Matter (BLM) rabble, who believe that vandalising the statue of Winston Churchill and desecrating war memorials is somehow acceptable, trendy, or a badge of honour among their fellow snowflakes; the same snowflakes that would have melted away in the face of the fascist hordes in WW2.
Imagine the incessant bleating, if they suffered the same hardships and privations the war generation endured on a daily basis so they could be free.
There is no recognition in their venom-filled tirade against Mr Hayes, that Britain led the world in abolishing global slavery and vigorously enforced it.
This resulted in numerous wars and clashes with aggrieved nations, whose slaves were forcibly liberated by the Royal Navy.
Many of those slaves were released in the aptly named Freetown, Sierra Leone, which as a British crown colony was the principal base for the Royal Navy’s suppression of the slave trade across the West African coast and Atlantic.
So, it is ironic that BLM and the snowflakes do not lift a finger to stop the slavery and genocide taking place today in China.
Are the ‘Wokies’ not concerned that their mobile phones, tablets and sick trainers might be made by the millions of slaves being held in China’s concentration camps?
As they tap away on their mobile phones, they could have blood on their hands. Worked to death, tortured, forced sterilisations, mass rapes, forced abortions, organ harvesting and more recently, satellite images exposing crematoria on-site, which may explain why 50,000 Uighur Muslims, Tibetans and Mongolians disappear each month. Instead, we have not heard so much as a squeak from BLM, or their snowflake groupies.
Angela Skeels
Long Sutton
All racism is wrong and should be treated equally
Over many years I have fought racism and discrimination across the world and in the process got a good kicking for my efforts in more than one country.
In your paper of January 26 we had the views of the right and the left on the state of modern day Britain. They were both right and they were both wrong.
I walk through Trafalgar Square most days and have witnessed a number of these events at first hand.
I didn’t check their CVs amongst the hail of bottles and stones being thrown at the police but the majority of the protesters were not white let alone being middle class students.
The ethnic communities have a lot of genuine grievances that need to be addressed and it is a tiny minority that want to see police budgets slashed and capitalism overturned and indeed riot in the streets.
On the left we have accuccusations of ‘heavy -handed,ham-fisted law enforcement.
True but that effects every community because of the worldwide ignorance in how to detain a suspect safely as he/she lays on the ground.
Do white lives matter? Yes but as much? I’m not so sure. A demonstrator threatened to kill an Australian female journalist covering the event with a sharpened screwdriver but was not charged with a hate crime.
Why not? The police won’t say because I’m not related to her!
On the plus side they had previously arrested a white male for a racist offence and he was convicted at Reading Crown Court on account of critising two white security guards as ‘wannabe policemen’. So that’s all right then. Work that one out!
When will the left and the right get it in to their heads that all racism is wrong and should be treated equally?
Rick Stringer
Sutton St James
We have become a nation of apologists
With the exception of Mr A. Livsey’s letter, what a lot of nonsense was published on the Free Press letters page of January 26.
‘Minorities’ by definition are just that, and hopefully will so remain.
It can’t honestly be expected that sensible voters would support any party/group/collection of misfits intent on breaking up capitalism and destroying authorities and ruining family life and values.
I do not think so. Also, what do they advocate instead?
Of course bad and evil things happen – they always have and will always occur – but all reasonable people will accept and understand this and be rightly sympathetic.
Also, they will hope justice prevails and that the lessons learnt are put into action.
We have become a nation of apologists, simply pandering to the whims and fancies of any cause opined by minority groups and mouthed by the media.
The current, constant self-flagellation carried out by many of these in power has become a joke and needs to stop.
Thank goodness there are people like Sir John Hayes who genuinely does uphold values and principles which I support. I hope he remains our MP.
RP Trent
Gedney Hill
We must all respect one another’s views
I hope you will allow me to correct some inaccuracies in Craig Jackson’s last letter (Free Press, February 2), and to request a little more respect for people with contrary views.
Mr Jackson opens by identifying my letter with ‘reactionary narrow views are damaging’ as if it applied to him; in fact this statement was a response to John Hayes’ column on ‘wokism’, not to Mr Jackson’s own letter, but –if the cap fits!
He assumes I didn’t read his previous letter properly, as I hadn’t realised that he was quoting from a German newspaper; I don’t think he made this interesting, but relevant, fact clear in his letter.
He has also misquoted me as saying Britain had the worst death rate in the world from COVID; if he reads my letter more carefully, he will see I was referring only to Europe.
Having said that, the main reason I responded to his first letter was to criticise its inappropriately triumphalist tone.
The referendum result showed a little over half of voters wanted to leave the EU and just under half to remain, and a little more respect is surely due to those (nearly half the population) who feel the country has made a dreadful mistake.
The use of the term ‘remoaners’ I find insulting and divisive. We will never agree on Europe, but need to recognise the very limited nature of the Brexit agreement.
Yes, we have at last done something right in the handling of COVID in our speed of vaccinations, and the EU does not come out of that situation well, but the recent dispute has shown the vulnerability of Northern Ireland under the terms of our trade agreement.
I also doubt that all these new global trade agreements that delight Mr Jackson will compensate those small firms struggling with time-consuming paperwork, many of whom I understand are being
advised to relocate to Europe.
Anna Maxey
Spalding
