LETTER: I can’t write on positives when there aren’t any

To GF Stanford, Letters, March 16. I’ll presume Mr. Mr Stanford, contrary to popular belief, the E&S does not print every letter I write.

You want me to write something positive about Brexit but how can I do that if no-one has shown me anything positive about it?

It’s no use saying we can trade around the world, as we were doing that before the referendum; our vehicle manufacturers were trading with about 160 countries. Quite frankly Mr. Stanford your letter smacks of ‘the truth hurts’.

As for the poor vaccination performance of the EU, I have mentioned that.

I do not consider Ursula von der Leyen any more able than Boris; possibly that has something to do with the fact that both have spent time at the European School in Brussels.

The difference between the EU and the UK is that they have the muscle to recover, but the Brexit/Covid financial mess we are in cannot be overcome by this Government.

Let me give you one little fact – we have spent £12.5 billion on PPE equipment, much of it placed with Tories' cronies. The 2019 purchase price for those items was £2.5 billion. Our Government’s incompetence was revealed by our flimsy and slow approach to Covid and again please don’t say it was something new. It has a number of similarities with SARS and we should have followed SARS experienced countries who this time last year were shutting borders and sealing off areas where Covid was found. You ask me to wait five to 10 years before criticising Brexit and this Government. Why? So that those who created Brexit can hide away from it all. You say you don’t believe the UK will be broken up – neither does Boris Johnson who told us earlier last year that Covid would be over in 12 weeks.

As for writing about something else, in January letters I mentioned that we were now out of the Erasmus scheme that paid for students and indeed staff to have educational experience abroad. You could have written about that or the fact that we are no longer part of Galileo so our brilliant space equipment manufacturers cannot send their payloads into space through Galileo. There have been many many things in my letters you could have written about rather than write in to say stop mentioning Brexit and this Government, it’s making my head hurt.

Roger Watts, Walsall

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