Letter: Measures we can take in pandemic

1. Scrap HS2 immediately. Use the HS2 money and contractors to divert and dredge rivers, and build hydroelectric dams and canals, as the Americans did during the Depression of the 1930s, creating jobs, clean energy and transport.

2. Cancel the proposed ban on coal and wood burning domestic fires in rural areas, thus ensuring the elderly who rely on open fires, log burners, and Rayburns, don’t die of cold in winter.

3. Reverse the ban on diesel and petrol cars, the imminence of which was already destroying the British motor industry before the current outbreak.

4. Forget about a national forest, nature reserves, and wildflower meadows (which badgers are digging up for worms) and secure our food supplies, with British produce, fruit and vegetables, never mind government adviser Tim Leunig, who recently said we should “abandon farms and ship all our food from abroad”, what a complete fruit case!

5. Forget Greta Thunberg and her Extinction Rebellion followers, who threaten poor and vulnerable people about a “climate emergency”. There is none, and won’t be.

6. Resurrect the Royal Observer Corps, Civil Defence, and Auxiliary Fire Service, stupidly axed, as were the CIWS (Close-In Weapons System) on Royal Navy ships, just before the Falklands War. Result? Hundreds of unnecessary casualties.

7. Reopen all closed railway lines, shut by idiotic Doctor Beeching, and re-nationalise under British Rail, as an affordable public transport system.

W F Kerswell, Picklescott

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