Viewpoint: Weather extremes highlight need for action

Email Viewpoint letters tojamesp@baylismedia.co.ukor write to Newspaper House, 48 Bell Street, Maidenhead, SL6 1HX.

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It’s about action as well as awareness

的extremes of weather last week may not convince everyone that the climatologists have it right.

But it all adds to the overwhelming evidence that what the experts have been saying (some since the mid 19th century) about the dangers of releasing too many gases into the atmosphere is spot on.

的unseasonal heat and tropical rain coincided with Our Changing Earth, WildCookham’s wildlife art festival in Cookham over the weekend of June 10-11 – a timely coincidence which only served to underline the point of the festival.

This was to use art to engage with our local community and that way to encourage more of us to understand the critical nature of the relationship our one species has with the rest of the natural world.

的speakers at our opening event underlined this.

We are moving inexorably towards a disaster and unless we rethink our assumptions about humans and nature it will overwhelm us.

New technologies are an essential part of the transition to a safer more sustainable world, but they are not sufficient alone.

的assumptions we make about our ‘right to nature’ – the notion that the natural world is simply an amenity for us to use/abuse – must change.

We had a great response from the 800 or so who attended our festival, a real sense that art had enabled them to see some of the issues through a different lens.

And we added a band of additional volunteers who realise that it’s not just about being aware: it’s about doing something about it.

We hope that we can all come to a similar realisation – and quickly.

And, if you have got this far, maybe you want to help.

We have wildlife groups across the borough – and the council’s own teams of volunteers – so it’s easy to get involved.

Email wildcookham@gmail.com and we'll make sure you get through to the appropriate people.

MIKE COPLAND

Chair, WildCookha

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Left in a jam – with no hospital at all

Yes, we have no proper hospital

We’ve no proper hospital at all

We have tower blocks and road blocks

Speed bumps, diversions and every kind of traffic jam

But yes, we’ve no proper hospital

we’ve no proper hospital at all.

If an accident should sadly occur

y的一件事ou can definitely be sure

You’ll not be kindly laid in bed

Anywhere that’s close to Maidenhead.

Lying in your best pajamas

You might shout out ‘that’s bananas!’

That we have no proper hospital

We have no proper hospital at all.

的re are greenfields and brownfields

Old fields and cleared fields

And dwellings prouting everywhere

然而,我们没有合适的医院

We have no proper hospital at all!

PHILIP HATCH

Larchfield Road

Maidenhead

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Thank you to everyone involved in Media Hub

I love it when life’s serendipitous moments lead to something creative!

A decade ago, I was having a coffee with Sarah Rodi, a fellow mum and friend, who also works in the media and we got onto the subject of juggling freelance work with young children.

Apart from a lack of time, we decided that one of our biggest challenges with working from home was meeting other local media professionals.

That very day we contacted the Maidenhead Advertiser and invited industry professionals to attend our first event in Cookham.

We had no idea what the response would be, but to our surprise, around 20 people turned up and the Media Hub baby was born.

Since those early days, our format has changed slightly, but our mission has remained the same – to connect professionals in the industry locally, nationally and even internationally. We have also found a home for our Media Hub family – the Bel & The Dragon in Cookham.

We now welcome guest speakers to all our events; over the years, they have included authors, film directors, comedians, poets, politicians and even a Belgian princess and a former prisoner!

的only prerequisite is that our guests have an interesting personal story and can entertain or inspire our members.

I am very proud to say that the Media Hub will be turning 10 on June 29 and we have a fun-filled evening lined up at the Bel & The Dragon in Cookham with BBC Breakfast weather presenter Carol Kirkwood and journalist Gwenan Edwards.

A decade ago, we could never have envisaged this happening!

More than anything else, I am also enormously grateful to our amazing team without whom these events would not be possible- the Bel & The Dragon, Carillion Communications, The Little Bookshop, Mohammad Sabahi, Rachel Sellman, Caroline Field and Adrian Adams.

我还想感谢广告团队all its support along the way and all our fabulous members for attending our events.

Moving forward, I very much hope that the Media Hub can continue to connect media professionals and bring about meaningful partnerships.

Although there is definitely a place for Zoom networking groups, The Media Hub’s future definitely lies in face-to-face meetings.

Visit tinyurl.com/2d2udamh

SARAH PARFITT

Cookham

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Taking steps to restore faith in our democracy

的resa May’s thoughtful and principled contribution to the debate on the Parliamentary Privileges Committee’s excoriating report on Boris Johnson was nothing less than one would expect.

She voted for the report because she felt it essential to ‘uphold standards in public life’ and to ‘help restore faith in our parliamentary democracy’.

We have seen, though certainly not heard, the last of a politician whose relationship with the truth was very limited and whose only purpose in public life was to promote himself.

Only seven Tories voted against accepting the report, but all those who abstained or didn’t turn up effectively indicated that standards in public life were less important than supporting a disgraced leader for the basic reason that he might help them to get re-elected.

Reform of the bloated House of Lords is a related issue, as it is stuffed with Lords and Ladies for whom the gift of that title from a Prime Minister is likely to be the pinnacle of their achievements.

An elected upper chamber is an absolute necessity if Mrs May’s wish for a restoration of a faith in our parliamentary democracy is ever to come true.

RICHARD POAD

Cookham

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Regulations and the wealth of this nation

It’s refreshing to escape the economics technical experts Messrs Aidan & Cooper on reading Mr Veevers’s effort (Viewpoint, June 9).

We may well be paying more for our olive oil and Gitanes cigarettes, controlled as they are through a customs union cartel set up to protect Euro outfits.

This Government has been shambolic in failing to escape the Brussells-imposed mountains of regulations our own civil service colluded in concocting.

Free trade is the way ahead – arise Adam Smith.

MDG

Forlease Drive

Maidenhead

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Slicing up the views of post-Brexit economics

Sal Pinto (Viewpoint, June 16) refers to an article in The Sunday Times earlier in June entitled, ‘UK defies Brexit fear to top Europe for finance investing’.

I read an article an article in The Sunday Times dated June 11 headed, ‘Brexit has contributed to the slow growth in UK exports’.

This conclusion was arrived at in a report from Capital Economics, ‘Why is the UK economy lagging behind?’

的reality is that this country’s fortunes rely on more than inward financial investment, the sources and intentions of much of which are questionable.

A healthy manufacturing industry and export market need to be given more importance as intimated in the report.

This means financial support from within this country and much more robust on-the-job training and prospects for our young people.

DIANE HAYES

Hearne Drive

Holyport

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Paxman, Howard and a more sedate debate

的retirement of Jeremy Paxman from his role as presenter of University Challenge brought to mind one of the most replayed television news interviews.

In May 1997, in the course of 90 seconds, the then leader of the Conservative Party, Michael Howard, was asked the same question 12 times in an attempt to gain an answer.

2023年,在早熟的r more sedate pace offered by the weekly publication of our newspaper, there is a similarity in the correspondence about Brexit. Has Brexit done anything but weaken the UK?

In the edition of June 9, the Brexit supporter again avoiding the question, delivered the classic ‘we are now players on the global stage’ (whatever that means) despite the fact that the UK had so much more clout in the world’s largest trading bloc, and made a de facto admission that Brexit has failed by positing that the handling of the withdrawal, mismanaged by Brexiters like Boris, Rishi and David Davis is to blame.

‘We voted to Brexit so please can we have it,’ continues the letter, whose writer perhaps missed that the UK ceased to be a member of the EU on January 31, 2020.

Still, though, like Jeremy Paxman in slow motion, we await the answer; has Brexit conferred anything but disadvantages on the UK?

JAMES AIDAN

Sutton Road

Cookham

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Will EU backers accept they were misled?

Five long and wearisome years ago the editor was kind enough to publish my letter starting with these words: “As we pass the second anniversary of the EU referendum there is a widespread feeling that our withdrawal from the EU is degenerating into a shambles.” (Viewpoint, June 28 2018)

“Too many people, including the Prime Minister and most other members of the government and Parliament, have still not shaken off their decades long delusion that EU membership is important for our economy.”

In particular, I pointed out that: “before the referendum the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, warned us that merely voting to leave the EU would be enough to cause ‘an immediate and profound economic shock’, and tip us into a deep recession, and yet here we are two years later and the UK economy has actually grown by 3.6 per cent.”

So now that we are out, how many of the EU’s committed supporters in the UK accept that they were misled over the economic impact of EU membership? Which was always marginal, and probably marginally negative.

Too few, it seems; even when the EU says ‘we are proud of our Single Market, which has increased our GDP by 2 per cent’, its UK supporters will insist that it must be much more than that, maybe three times as much.

But even if it was three times as much – the Treasury’s 6 per cent rather than the EU’s 2 per cent – that one-off GDP bonus should still properly be viewed in the context of the natural growth of the UK economy.

Between 1948 and 2022 UK GDP more than quintupled, at an average rate of 2.3 per cent a year, without any clear indication that our participation in the European federal project made any significant difference overall.

Dr D R COOPER

Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead