Hear All Sides

FOOT-AND-MOUTH

THE number of slaughtered cattle and sheep must be reaching the nine million mark. Most of them are healthy. This is a form of mass insanity, I believe.

I remember, before the war, if the odd case of foot-and-mouth came up, the farmer would isolate that animal for a fortnight. He would paint its feet with Stockholm tar and rinse its mouth with salt water.

To slaughter nine million healthy cattle is an abomination. Farmers used to be countrymen who cared for the land and the animals thereon. Now they seem to be all businessmen. The animal rights people are silent. Maybe only foxes have rights.

Foot-and-mouth is not a killer. Other countries use vaccination. We sentence animals to politically-correct slaughter. - Jim Ross, Rowlands Gill.

COUNTRY LIFE

JOHN Haigh of the Countryside Alliance rightly says (HAS, Sept 1) that sports like fox hunting have a huge input into the rural economy.

Quite so, an economy that over the last 50 years has blighted and devastated the countryside, that has systematically crucified where it has not poisoned wildlife and wildflowers, as it has crucified the livelihoods and often the homes of many genuine country people.

Individualism gets you nowhere except hell and that's what the agriculture and bloodsports industries are doing to the countryside; turning it into a hell for farm animals and wildlife and, given half a chance, for the rest of us too.

John Haigh's letter is big on words, short on facts.

Specific facts like the virtual obliteration over large areas of Britain of the hedgerows and broadleaved woodlands, which he says have been maintained by hunting and shooting interests: and facts like the utterly abhorrent nature of innocent suffering and the equally abhorrent nature of those who enjoy inflicting it. - Tony Kelly, Crook.

EUROPE

NO it would not be a good thing for the country if the Conservatives choose Kenneth Clarke, as Hugh Pender suggests (HAS, Sept 1).

I, for one, do not want closer ties with Europe, and I know I am not alone in that wish. If I was, we would be having a referendum on that. Anyone thinking we would be better off in Europe is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Quite apart from the silly things like telling us what is chocolate and what isn't, what about the loss of border controls if we were a full part of Europe, what about pensions if we integrate the east Europeans countries into the EU, what about the cost to us for the modernisation of eastern European countries, what about immigration?

Unless we were on a par with all European countries, with higher taxes and higher unemployment, we would still be a Mecca for all these illegal immigrants.

You may put down the US for self interest, but they look after their own. - A Blenkinsop, Isle of Wight.

ARE "our friends and saviours" in America? (HAS, Aug 29). Alan Clark, the late Tory minister, thought not. In The Tories 1992-1997 he describes how Churchill "set about the task of arranging our alternative subjugation to the United States".

In 1940 we were forced to cede territory in the Caribbean to the US for ships, only nine of which were ready for immediate service. Our gold reserves and American investments were forfeited.

Over Suez, in November 1956, "Eisenhower was directing the campaign to punish Britain", including selling sterling short.

During the Falklands crisis, the US tried to restrict our use of our sovereign territory on Ascension Island.

Friends and saviours? The US pursues what it sees as its national self-interest like any other nation. At the very least, Britain in Europe has input, control and democracy. As a non-voting 51st state of the US, we would have none.

Where does our national self-interest lie? Like many sensible people, I believe it is as a fully participant member of the biggest trading block in the world, the European Union of free and democratic states. - Robin Ashby, Newcastle.

RATES

LOCAL councils still have the same stupid idea that anyone living in a high-cost house is wealthy and those in poor housing have small incomes.

It is called rates, and if a widow is living in a semi-detached house while her neighbours in house next door have perhaps five or six wage earners, then they pay the same rates even though the six wage earners use far more of the council's facilities than the pensioner next door.

Almost every wage earner pays income tax, so could not the Government click on to the council's computer the income of the people living (and receiving services) in that council's district and a decision could be made on what rates should be contributed? - E Reynolds, Wheatley Hill.

GREAT BRITAIN

THE leader writer's comments (Echo, Aug 28) are a case of a nation that is lacking in the basic intuition to be one step ahead. We seem to have lost our sense of adventure and the desire to be there with the best.

Our cricket has been going downhill for years and now it seems, as usual, we are using someone else's ideas, only 20 years too late.

We rely on other nations to prop up our economy and it seems all we can do is toady up to whoever will give us a helping hand. We are no longer a nation with any kind of influence, other than a nation with more than its share of thugs and hooligans. - John Young, Crook.