Here are the letters from this week’s Lynn News…
We need to take action on climate change now
It is now beyond doubt that greenhouse gases are heating the planet.
If we do not achieve a balance between the amounts of greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere and the amount we remove, temperatures will continue to rise to levels too high to support life.
Our council acknowledged the truth of this in 2021 when they declared a climate emergency.
Reform councillors now want the council to end the 2021 climate emergency and replace it with a practical environmental and resilience strategy.
This, they say, would focus on protecting our area from real risks such as flooding, coastal erosion, drainage pressures, water scarcity, and loss of agricultural land and wildlife habitats.
Certainly, these are important – that is why they are already priorities for the council. But to focus just on the environment to the exclusion of other sectors would be like using a sticking plaster to fix a broken leg.
To be effective in balancing output and input of greenhouse gases, there needs to be policies for emissions from our homes, travel, agriculture and industry.
The irony is that measures to reduce emissions in these sectors are vital to also protect the environment, so Reform in calling for sole focus on the environment is effectively scoring an own goal.
Reform suggests that local environmental strategies make life harder for those already struggling but provides no evidence or examples.
They seem to have overlooked Norfolk Warm Homes, which helps people who are struggling to cut bills by making their homes more energy efficient.
Norfolk Warm Homes, like many strategies, is not a drain on local finances but is paid for by central government.
Since declaring a climate emergency, West Norfolk has gained £17 million of funding and also long-term savings through investment in more efficient infrastructure.
Extreme weather is a result of climate change, making life difficult for all of us, but people who are less well-off are most affected.
We need to hold on to the climate emergency declaration for all our sakes because we are facing an emergency.
Environmental resilience will be beyond any practical means if we do not take concerted action now.
Ignoring this is burying our heads in the sand.
Jenny Walker
Roydon
I’d be glad to help out at nature reserve
I was impressed with Josh Osborne’s article in Lynn News Friday Politics (June 19), very edifying and well-documented.
It was more about presentation than the evangelising of Ed Milliband in his oratory, but I still have reservations about climate change.
Nevertheless, I could still work with him despite our different political persuasions on our feathered friends, sharing my years of experience in ornithology and membership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Josh particularly came to my attention by singling out the Willows Nature Reserve at the heart of his ward, showing a tangible interest in a vital natural asset.
He displayed an in-depth knowledge of the reed beds playing a vital part in protecting wildlife. The habitat is important for warbler species such as the reed, sedge and willow ones.
My sister-in-law lives nearby and has a bird table which attracts woodpeckers, titmice and finches, attributable to the location of a reserve rich with a varied species which we must maintain, or better still, enhance.
I am well-known in the community and easily accessible, and glad to help out in my humility, no ‘crowing’!
Let’s see the return of the swallows, and be swift about it to keep the fly population down.
David Fleming
Downham
Glad that parties trying to make division got a thumping
So, Andy Burnham had a resounding victory over those who preach dissent to the extent that those political parties incite racism and violence with a large dollop of misogyny.
I know that some of my friends, former Labour Party members, do not perceive him as the full Democratic Socialist ticket.
However, if he becomes the Prime Minister, maybe slightly ‘left of centre’ will be better for the UK than the centrist faction currently holding the reins.
What I am glad about is that those political parties that try to create division got a thumping.
These right-wing politicians voted against laws protecting women, which is contrary to their claim to be ‘Christians’.
I quote a section of the Centre for Action and Contemplation’s Fr, Richard Rohr’s meditation on what it means to be ‘Christian‘.
“Either we see Christ in everyone, or we hardly see Christ in anyone. Either we are Christ to everyone, or we cannot be Christ to anyone.”
When he says ‘everyone’, he means everyone.
Mike Larcey
Downham
There’s an orange elephant in the room
It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge the effort taken by South West Norfolk MP Terry Jermy to alleviate the cost of living burden on his constituents (Lynn News column, June 12)
Though a welcome change from his predecessor, the truth is that this is just tinkering.
Mr Jermy ignores the demented orange elephant in the room – Donald Trump.
Europe’s (I include the UK) core problem is that it blindly joined in Trump’s Nato provocation and the insane proxy war with Russia.
The economic rot began when Liz Truss gleefully announced the first (of 21) tranches of sanctions to hit Russia’s sale of cheap oil, gas and fertilisers.
As we began to realise we had very effectively committed economic suicide, Trump handed us the full running costs of his war. To our shame, we took over, handing billions upon billions of cash to Ukraine.
As if this madness was not enough, we then welcomed the US and Israel’s unprovoked war against Iran, the world’s major oil producer. Instantly Europe’s economic crisis became a world crisis.
Working to challenge and change government policy mistakes and errors, such as these, is what we expect our Members of Parliament to do. Yet
I see no sign or glimmer of this in anything Mr Jermy does or says.
If he wants to continue as an MP, he needs to raise his sights above the parish pump.
Philip Wagstaff
Methwold
Staff cannot undermine new bosses
The story revealing an undercurrent of unrest and dissent within staff at council offices after the new Reform regime started tweaking things as they press home their new political advantage makes for interesting reading.
Clearly miffed by Reform’s radical campaign to get staff focusing on the desk-bound day jobs which we pay them to do rather than airing their personal preferences and ideologies, some it seems are fomenting rebellion and actively resisting the new leadership.
From my simple perspective it appears we need to decide whether we are going to allow the tail to wag the dog or whether democracy must hold sway and as council-taxpayers voted in droves to see Reform’s vision become reality, I believe we cannot have our employees chuntering around the water-cooler grumbling and undermining their new bosses and using Pride flags etc as tools to subvert authority.
Times change and while staff condemn the loss of ‘working from home’ privileges, it’s plain this post-Covid practice in general results in poor performance and diminishing productivity. People don’t like change, but change is coming and frankly staff are duty bound to knuckle down and support the new politics and leave their private agendas at home where they always should have belonged. End of!
Steve Mackinder
Denver
Reader’s picture
This atmospheric picture, taken by Justin Walker, shows a runner from Lynn’s Globe Trotters group, jogging along the river bank on Sunday, heading towards West Lynn
And finally…
John Elson’s cartoon for the Lynn News this week