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We would lose influence over the environmental impact of neighbouring countries, whose behaviour affects the migration of our wildlife, the pollution of our air and the health of our seas. It could also weaken our efforts to tackle climate change and undercut existing UK environmental protections, since there is no guarantee that the high standards we have negotiated within Europe will remain in place in Britain.
We are clear that the way to create a better environment for UK citizens is to strengthen environmental action through European cooperation, not by leaving the EU.
John Gummer, Michael Heseltine, Chris Patten and Caroline Spelman, former environment secretaries; Greg Barker, former climate change minister; Richard Benyon and Tim Yeo, former environment ministers; Charles Hendry, former energy minister; Laura Sandys, former member of the Energy and Climate Change Committee; Stanley Johnson, former Conservative MEP
Sir: Roll on 24 June. Your well-argued call for a more reasoned debate on EU membership (Leading article, 23 April) will not, I fear, be heeded. As a voter, I have resigned myself to being treated as a child. What is more depressing is the infantile behaviour of campaigners on both sides. The trading of ill-founded or often patently false assertions is reminiscent of the playground. This is unlikely to change in the final month of the ‘debate’.
‘Rely on your instincts’ might be better advice for voters.
Clive Thursby
Hindhead, Surrey
Sir: The assessment in your leading article of the influence of the UK’s newspapers (16 April) made me wonder if the digital revolution had slipped the author’s mind. Now that people read across a variety of platforms, the global influence of newspaper brands has reached unprecedented levels.
In Britain, five of the top six news websites are owned and run by newspaper publishers, which means that national newspapers’ digital readership is more than 34 million a month. Print readership augments this figure, with seven million national newspapers bought each day. That’s one of the reasons the papers continue to set the agenda on television, radio and now social media.
The truth is that there is a bigger appetite for news and opinion than ever, but just as The Spectator’s online readership outstrips its print sales, so it is with our newspapers.
Rufus Olins
Chief executive, Newsworks
Sir: I am surprised that Martin Vander Weyer thinks that is acceptable for the government to pump billions into RBS and Lloyds ‘to save the banking system’ but thinks that a tiny fraction of the amount spent on those banks to tide Port Talbot over a difficult period would be wasted (Any other business, 23 April).
Mr Vander Weyer might like to consider that for its suppliers and customers, Port Talbot is as systemically important as the banks whose interests he so assiduously promotes. The failure to defend our productive industries, as other countries do, while eulogising the financial sector and its acolytes is somewhat depressing. Should we ever suffer a wartime blockade, what does Mr Vander Weyer suggest we use for weapons: multiple-warhead credit default swaps?
Richard Price
Upper Dormington, Hereford
Sir: Stewart Dakers’s lament about ageing in your 9 April issue (‘Live fast, die not too old’) misses a few vital points on the topic. Being in a truly decrepit state like Swift’s Struldbrugs is not to be desired, but surely one can have a wonderful old age without being what Nazi eugenicists would dub a ‘useless eater’? Even with the annoyances of physical decline, wonders are possible. For one, there is the fact of being sentimental social capital. The aged can be the matriarchs and patriarchs of a family, its link and anchor to its past and treasured for that — even in our youth-fixated, narcissistic age.
There are also the delights of being a spectator of life. George Carlin made a crack about life being a free seat to the greatest freak show imaginable, which is true but only part of the story. There is always the wonder of what history will next unfold before your eyes. After all, real life is far more surprising than any novel. Worth living for, I’d say.
Julius Wroblewski
Vancouver, Canada
Because you read about ageing
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