Sir, Sir Tony Blair is right that Nato’s insistence that it will not get involved in the conflict, whatever Russia does militarily, is a “strange tactic” (“Zelensky: we can’t join Nato”, news, Mar 16). We should make it crystal clear to Russia that if it dares to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine we will immediately retaliate by providing aircraft for the Ukrainian air force. We should back up this threat with an immediate redeployment of Nato air power to put us in a position to do this, and indeed give us further options. We cannot continue to allow Russia to act with impunity.
Lord Lee of Trafford
House of Lords
Sir, In July 2019 the defence select committee published a special report (HC 2527) updating an earlier analysis of UK defence expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, since the mid-1950s. It confirmed that, according to traditional Ministry of Defence accounting criteria, the UK figure declined to 1.9 per cent in 2014-15, and then 1.8 per cent for each of the following three years. Only the adoption of more generous Nato accounting criteria by the MoD in 2015-16 restored the figures to just above the Nato minimum requirement of 2 per cent. On this basis, we are now investing 2.3 per cent after a recent increase. Yet, applying the changed criteria retrospectively, the report showed that 5.5 per cent of GDP was spent on defence in 1984-85 (4.5 per cent under the old accounting system). Despite taking the “peace dividend” after the Berlin Wall fell, we were still spending 3 per cent on defence as late as 1996-97. Now that Putin’s aggression has resurrected the Cold War it is time to restore defence to its proper place in our national priorities. Next week’s spring statement by the chancellor would be a good place to start.
Dr Julian Lewis MP
Chairman, defence select committee 2015-19; House of Commons
Sir, Ken Dickinson (letter, Mar 15) questions why people need to be paid to offer accommodation to Ukrainian refugees. I think £350 a month is fair: the cost of utilities is increasing and perhaps council tax too. I live alone and am very happy to look after refugees in my home. It will be very difficult when they arrive not to give them food and drink, even though that is not part of the government’s scheme. Not everyone hosting a Ukrainian family will be able to afford that.
Johanna Hamer
Cheltenham, Glos
Sir, Many towns and cities in Britain have an empty department store. Can they not be used to house refugees? If I were a refugee I would be happier being housed with my fellow citizens rather than being placed where I do not know the cultural customs. These large department stores would also offer children the space in which to run around. As welcoming as British hosts will undoubtedly be, for some refugees adjusting to a new way of life without knowing the language of the host country may prove as traumatic as the long journey already taken.
Margaret Djurisic
Kidlington, Oxon
Sir Rather than using village halls (letters, Mar 12 & 15), why not offer temporary accommodation to the refugees in underused churches? Many no longer have pews, and the resulting flexible space could house camp beds, eating and relaxation areas and play space for the children.
Elizabeth Freeman
Corston, Somerset
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EMBRACING OLIGARCHS
Sir, As a Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein may be happy for his party to have been partially funded by associates of Vladimir Putin, whose motivation he glosses over as merely predictable concern by rich people about taxes being “too high” (“Britain was right to embrace the oligarchs”, Mar 16). The reality is that under this government the oligarchs gained other influence, such as the legal intimidation of Catherine Belton and HarperCollins for publishing Putin’s People, while promised measures on transparency over the beneficial ownership of assets were mysteriously delayed from year to year. Of course money buys influence — why give it otherwise?
Christopher Clayton
Chester
Sir, Daniel Finkelstein argues that Britain was right to embrace the oligarchs and questions whether it has done us any harm. I can’t believe that he hasn’t read Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People or Oliver Bullough’s Butler to the World. The oligarchs ravaged the Russian economy in the 1990s, often criminally hoovering up public resources cheaply and then decamping to London to launder their ill-gotten gains, buy respectability and live high on the hog: friends to education, selected charities and treasurers of the Conservative Party. We have given criminals a cloak of respectability.
Bill Jones
Former professor of politics and history, Liverpool Hope University
Sir, I disagree with Daniel Finkelstein: we were wrong to embrace the oligarchs because many of them are not fit and proper people to be clients of our banks, brokers and other service providers. They would not be regarded as such if they were British citizens and should not have been given recognition simply because their crimes took place overseas.
Ian Peacock
London W4
SURGING INTEREST IN GREEN ENERGY
Sir, Alice Thomson puts her faith in wind farms (“Suddenly, we’ve all warmed to green energy”, Mar 16) but she omits to mention that their output is unreliable and, during anticyclonic periods such as is forecast for the next few days, very much reduced. For this reason back-up is needed, mostly at present in the form of fossil fuel generation. No doubt electricity generated by wind turbines has a part to play but to keep the lights on a reliable alternative is needed. Thomson dismisses nuclear by referring to Chernobyl but we should remember that not a single person has died in this country in the 60 years that nuclear power stations have been operating. Nuclear is surely what we must rely on long term for the reliable generation of electricity.
Andrew Harris
Droitwich, Worcestershire
Sir, Sarah Courage (letter, Mar 16) describes the threat to coastal Suffolk posed by the first two wind energy projects planned for a nature-based tourism area. This is the tip of the iceberg. The largest hub in the UK is promised by National Grid, with at least seven connectors up to 24 metres high plus substations.
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Belgium’s electricity system operator, Elia, shows a smarter way forward. Wind energy can be gathered from three or four wind farms at offshore platforms and brought to brownfield hubs using sub-sea arterial cables; this is known as a modular offshore grid. Onshore pylon cables no longer have capacity for the amount of electricity planned off the Suffolk coast. After years of dithering, Britain should invest in offshore solutions.
Fiona Gilmore
Snape, Suffolk
Sir, There is one source of energy that seems to have been unplumbed: that produced by people pounding away on their Pelotons each day. During during the occupation of France in the Second World War, power cuts were long and frequent and hairdressing salons would hire cyclists to power their hairdriers. The technology exists but for some reason nobody is using it.
Maroussia Richardson
London SW11
NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE
Sir, Helen Rumbelow (Notebook, Mar 14) remembers the fear of nuclear war brought on by watching Threads but at least she was spared the far greater anxiety of living through the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the world really did seem on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Now that we know the outcome it is easy to forget just how horrifying it was. Children take their cues from the adults around them, and I remember sensing that my junior school teacher in California did not think much of our nuclear attack drill, which was a variation on our usual earthquake drill (the school was on top of the San Andreas fault), in that we were told to push our desks into the middle of the room and huddle together instead of just getting under them. His feelings became plainer when he told us he was not setting any weekend homework “because we probably won’t be here on Monday”. Fortunately for us all, he was wrong.
Laura Craven
Rogate, W Sussex
NAZANIN’S RELEASE
Sir, Now that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been released I do hope the prime minister will not hijack her return by participating in a tasteless egocentric photo opportunity (“Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe leaves Iran for UK”, Mar 17). Instead he should hang his head in shame and quietly apologise for the part that his incompetence as foreign minister played in extending her incarceration, when he wrongly claimed that she had been training journalists in Iran.
Neil Kennedy
Burnham on Crouch, Essex
WAYWARD CHURCH
Sir, People of all faiths and none will have been praying hard for an end to this war. However, Christians will have been taken aback by your report that Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, presented a religious icon to Viktor Zolotov, who leads the Russian National Guard, saying that it would “inspire” troops involved in the fighting and aid them in their efforts to “protect the fatherland” (“Top officer admits slow advance”, Mar 15). The Archbishop of Canterbury has rightly condemned this war; if only he could persuade his Russian counterpart to do the same to end this massacre of the innocent.
Michael Jack
South Brent, Devon
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CHRISTIAN CONVERTS
Sir, It is not surprising that the results to date of the Church of England’s programme to recruit “new disciples” are disappointing (“Converts cost ailing CofE £6,000 each”, Mar 12). Many people are well disposed towards the church but are agnostic and cannot subscribe to all Christian beliefs: they are unlikely to want to join their parish church as “new disciples”. It has been noted that while the number of those attending parish churches continues to fall, the number attending cathedrals is moving in the opposite direction. It seems unlikely that all those newly attending cathedrals would consider themselves “new disciples’’. Most parish churches are of course very different from cathedrals, but perhaps they could learn from them by offering opportunities for contemplation without the apparent expectation of conversion. Agnostics might then be attracted to parish churches, knowing that their honestly held position was respected. They might even find that there are those within the church who share that position.
David Pennie
Cottingham, E Yorks
BRANDISHING ORANGE
Sir, The problem with deploying an orange card in Saturday’s Six Nations rugby match (letters, Mar 15; sport, Mar 14) would be that after 20 minutes England would have had a full team but Ireland would still have been without James Ryan, who was unable to continue after Charlie Ewels’s high tackle.
Peter McNeice
Rostock, Germany
FIGURES OF SPEECH
Sir, I would write in response to your article “Meet Ms Perfectly Boring, the birdwatching accountant” (news, Mar 15) but as I am a mathematically inclined accountant with a lifelong interest in railways, no doubt my contribution would be considered too boring for publication.
Steven Hogg
Northallerton
MRS CHIPPY LIVES ON
Sir, Many years ago I was given a curled-up replica of Mrs Chippy (letters, Mar 14 & 16) and she sleeps peacefully on a pillow in my bedroom. Her owner and the dear cat are remembered every day.
Sue Robinson
Bridport, Dorset
