Letters - Monday January 18 2021

This country is being annihilated. Depression is at an all-time high.

Telling people to “stay home” doesn’t help, especially those with health conditions such as heart problems, high blood pressure etc. It only exacerbates their condition.

More and more people are lacking in vitamin D due to not getting enough sunlight.

They need outside air, even for short periods of time.

Not everyone has a garden to walk around.

Would any MP like to stay home in a cramped flat, with no outside space not even a balcony?

I don’t think so.

The rules and regulations from the Government are getting more and more ridiculous and contradictory by the day.

We are instructed to refrain from walking in parks yet it is quite permissible for 22 men to kick a ball around a football pitch.

And why are golf courses closed? Golfers aren’t colliding with each other.

No wonder people are confused.

How can a country possibly run smoothly when there is no co-ordination?

The PM needs to listen to a cross-section of people and have open discussions with scientific professionals, not just his own advisors who he follows blindly without seeking alternative viewpoints.

The British Brainwashing Corporation doesn’t help matters either, scaring people with exaggerated scenarios.

Some people are even frightened to open their own front door.

Tuning in to a more reliable source would perhaps be a better option.

In the present state of things, listening to the doom and gloom of half truths doesn’t help morale.

J Norman

via email

virus

Conservatives have done a lousy job

For a government so obsessed about controlling our borders the Conservatives have done a lousy job. When the Covid virus first hit in spring last year, the UK was one of the last two countries left with no real restrictions on incoming travel.

Thousands of travellers from Wuhan province in China entered the UK. Holidaymakers returning from Italy and Spain who faced lockdown, masks and other restrictions on holiday walked willy nilly through UK airports where staff were totally unprotected and unprepared.

Even now, the laxness with which we impose checks to prevent virus mutations from South Africa and Brazil have been a case of half closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Our Home Secretary is obsessed with a handful of poor people crossing the channel in dinghies whilst the real threat to our health and security has walked in through the front door.

Johnson and his ministers talk a good game and are ready with the boastful claims and promises but the reality hides a staggering level of incompetence and failure. The consequence has been a death toll and economic damage far greater than our European counterparts.

Mr H Donaldson

via email

Politics

Twitter was right for banning Trump

Ever since his inauguration Donald Trump has assiduously fostered a populist and ultra right-wing cult with his outrageous use of social media.

Since 2009 he has tweeted over 46,000 times. An analysis by the Washington Post shows his tweets to be replete with a constant stream of grossly exaggerated, invented, boastful, spiteful, dubious, coarse, illiterate, outrageous, inconsistent and totally false claims. The content beggars belief. That they have come from the head of the most powerful country in the world is hard to comprehend.

Trump has berated people with boastful, coarse threatening invective. Facts and truth do not matter.

But Twitter doesn’t come out of this smelling of roses. For far too long it has allowed Trump’s rants to go unchecked. Only now has its Chief Executive condemned him and banned his use of Twitter. As a result some misguided people argue that Trump’s right of free speech has been infringed. Nonsense.

Philosophers like Voltaire who staunchly fought for the right of free speech never envisaged it being used to encourage hatred and violence.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, often misquoted, was later amended in the International Covenant On Civil and Political Rights. The latter states that these rights carry special ‘duties and responsibilities’. All Rights, it states, are ‘subject to restrictions in order to protect national security, ‘public order’ and many other things’. Human Rights and freedom of expression it makes clear are NOT absolute.

A key reason for restrictions on free speech is the famous ‘no harm principle’. This was first proposed by philosopher John Stuart Mill in the 19th century. In his 1859 book ‘On Liberty’ he agrees that freedom of speech is a vital freedom as ‘ long as it does no harm to others’. When it does the state has the right and duty to intervene.

His views have become accepted in most liberal democratic states ever since. Today the curse of social media has made the ‘no harm’ principle of greater importance than ever before. It is a magnet for people like Trump. Twitter at last has acted correctly.

Dr Barry Clayton

Thornton Cleveleys