A reality check on immigration claims - your letters, plus an RAF adventure snapshot from 1962
Readers push back against political claims, arguing that debate on immigration is anything but silenced and that HS2 risks failing the wider regions it was meant to serve.
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Ratcliffe’s point was absurd
Chris Smith (letter 21 February) asserts "debate over immigration" is being "stifled". Really? He/she makes this assertion in a letter intended for publication in a newspaper. It would seem to me that it is extremely difficult to avoid people droning on about immigration, even in the most unlikely of places. I look at a picture on a nostalgic Facebook page dedicated to historic photos of my home town, and somebody comments ‘how lovely Walsall looked in 1976 when the streets were free of litter and immigrants’, before slithering back under his rock without noticing that the photo was posted by a bloke named Patel.
Chris further asserts Ratcliffe was right. No. Ratcliffe's figures for immigration to the UK were absurd and rested on population figure for 2020 a mere nine million out. I would have to concede that Ratcliffe does have personal experience as an immigrant to Monaco.
The septuagenarian Ratcliffe is also fleeing the UK because he doesn't want to pay his fair whack of tax. This is a rather different situation from the famous "military age man" sensibly scarpering from a country where he is likely to be conscripted by some faction in a civil war.
Alan Harrison, Midlands
