“A member of staff, and some of the public, immediately stepped in”
The Box, Plymouth(Image: William Telford)
The latest reader letters in our sister print title The Herald include thanks to staff and members of the public following a medical incident at The Box and, of course, more fallout from last week’s local elections.
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Huge thanks to quick thinking staff at The Box
Via The Herald I would like to say a huge thank you to the brilliant staff at The Box.
Last week while visiting the Beryl Cook exhibition with an elderly American relative, she collapsed.
A member of staff, and some of the public, immediately stepped in to help. A first-aider was there within a minute and an NHS First Responder not long after.
The Box staff were kind, patient, diligent and could not have done more and my wife and I are so grateful to them. It is a shame our relative was unable to continue the exhibits as she was thoroughly enjoying them, fortunately she is able to continue her trip to Europe.
Hugh Janes
The triumph of hope over experience
To replace Starmer is the triumph of hope over experience.
Many times similar things have been tried and so very often have failed. Winston Churchill is an example of someone who was rejected in politics many times, even after his greatest success.
The present Labour MPs are afraid of losing their own cushy numbers more than doing the correct thing for the country.
It is unfortunate that most are cowards and therefore will not be doing a good job for the country.
They do not have five million to fall back upon.
Michael J Taylor
Local issues matter – so stand for election
Rodger Ruse (“Local votes were sadly aimed at national politics”, May 12th) seems to be concerned that the Labour Party will abandon its policies to compete with the Reform Party, but he doesn’t need to worry. The worst that will happen is that the Labour Party will claim to support conservative policies, then renegue on their promises, just as they did after the last general election.
Encouraging people to vote Reform because they hate the Labour Party may be a moral grey area, but I voted Reform because I want to live in country which embraces Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, the right to own property, the right to life, and limited government.
Local issues do matter, but the best way to make them happen is to stand for election to the local council. That’s what I did when I got sick of the council wasting money to maintain Pounds House. I only got 98 votes, but the council sold it a few years later, and the Plymouth Herald has just reported that it is going to become a SEND school.
Bernard John Toolan
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Knee-jerk reactions can be dangerous
At the last General Election, there was a major knee-jerk reaction towards Labour from the Conservatives.
Now, virtually halfway through the term of office earned by Labour’s votes at the ballot box, earning their big majority in the House of Commons, the latest knee-jerk at local elections across the nation has witnessed an insane lurch to Reform UK and in part to the Green Party.
Is the entitled electorate so blind in not realising just what Nigel Farage actually stands for? He is a devoted puppet of a failing, self-opinionated United States President and a self-confessed admirer of a Russian tyrant.
It is to be sincerely hoped that, by the next General Election, the true intentions, ambitions and policies of both Reform and the Greens are fully exposed before we become the laughing stock of Europe – and NATO, if you are listening, Trump?
Bob Gelder
We all want food and energy security
People raise valid concerns about energy and food security, but the argument for North Sea drilling as a solution is flawed.
Whilst importing fossil fuels via diesel‑powered vessels has higher emissions than local production, the logic that domestic extraction therefore solves the problem overlooks a fundamental truth: North Sea reserves are depleting rapidly. New fields take years to reach production, offer no price insulation from global markets, and lock us into infrastructure we must eventually abandon anyway when the area runs dry. Decarbonisation, by contrast, permanently reduces imports.
I support rooftop solar to minimise the use of land, and the government is doing just that through the Future Homes Standard for new builds and measures such as zero VAT on solar panels and the Warm Homes Plan to support retrofitting. But it won’t be enough and I’d also like to see more solar farms with grazing and wind turbines on farmland which should also be wildlife friendly.
On food security, the threat is far greater than solar farms on agricultural land. Britain imports roughly half its food from many regions now facing worsening droughts, floods and harvest failures driven by climate change which is also significantly degrading our own farmland. North Sea drilling won’t protect us from that problem. The most urgent food‑security measure available is rapid decarbonisation to slow the climate disruption that will devastate global agriculture.
We all want food and energy security, but investing in the North Sea just leads us in circles. The solution to fuel and food insecurity is reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
Steve Jeffrey
