No control

Sir: Your leading article (‘The welfare monster’, 25 November) has fallen into the increasingly common trap of posthumously attributing to Brexit voters imagined reasons for their voting to leave. No, we didn’t ‘in large part’ do so in a search for a better economic model. We did so to rid ourselves of the Brussels behemoth and regain control of our borders. The economically literate of us knew there would be an economic price, but we believed the break for freedom was worth the (allegedly temporary) drop in living standards. How wrong we were. Our borders are as porous as ever, the Whitehall leviathan squats on us more firmly than Brussels ever did, and now the fiscal reality of an ageing and apparently idle populace condemns us to ignominious economic stagnation. Meanwhile the main propagandist (influencer-in-chief, perhaps) cashes in on his celebrity status in a TV jungle. Welcome to the modern world!

Jeremy Dyer

Poole, Dorset

Science fiction

Sir: Rod Liddle’s point (‘The science is not always right’, 25 November) is borne out by history, though it is unlikely that the Covid Inquiry will ever touch upon it. The acceptable science of the mid-19th century assured us that all disease emanated from ‘bad air’. That science dissipated like a bad smell when Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur got it right about germs. And wasn’t it Lavoisier and his wild anti-establishment heresies about oxygen that left the science of phlogiston smouldering? A flat Earth and the geocentric universe were both believed in at the time, as strongly as lockdowns and paper masks were a couple of years back. Orthodoxies on climate or the nuttier bits of quantum theory might yet come undone. Some day in the future scientists may have a good laugh at our expense.

Martin Hedges

Glemsford, Suffolk

Fish tales

Sir: Land-based salmon farming is nothing new (‘Notes on salmon’, 25 November). I worked on a land-based salmon farm in the very early 1980s, spending two wonderful years living on the edge of Loch Fyne. The salmon were, as Prue Leith points out, excellent quality, being in a good current and a clean environment. The superior quality of the fish meant the farm was the sole supplier of farmed salmon to Harrods.

Once cage-farming was industrialised, the cost of land-based farming became prohibitive. However, the land-based method increasingly makes sense once the external costs of offshore farming – both environmental and ethical – are borne by the producers. Planning permission has just been recommended for approval for a major land-based salmon farm in Grimsby.

Grant Forbes

Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire

Not all quiet

Sir: I read with interest Toby Young’s Armistice Day article (No sacred cows, 18 November). I organise the Western Front Association’s annual Armistice Day service at the Cenotaph. Had he been with us on Whitehall rather than in Parliament Square, he wouldn’t have spotted much ‘old-fashioned decency’ at 11 a.m. Our beautiful service was disrupted throughout by vile yobs in the areas where the public can stand and watch. This included shouting, laughing and singing from a large group 300 yards down Whitehall, which persisted throughout the service, including during the wreath-laying. Others climbed the scaffolding of a nearby building and passed around beer cans. These groups suggested they had come to ‘defend’ the Cenotaph from the much later pro-Palestinian march. In fact, the Cenotaph was nobly defended by armed police from early morning. Incredibly, they needed to provide a cordon to stop these yobs getting into our service.

Rich M. Hughes

Trustee, Western Front Association

London SW13

Name-calling

Sir: As someone whose name is frequently mangled, I’m never annoyed when people ask how it is pronounced (‘The real reason the civil service needs reform’, 25 November). The problem with pledges like ‘Say My Name’ – and indeed the practice of signing off with one’s pronouns – is the assumption that the interlocutor, if unsure, is too uncouth to ask, or that such a question might be considered intrusive. Surely in a professional context, it’s a good starting point to assume that people are civilised?

Adrian Pascu-Tulbure

London SW6

Home truths

Sir: Your item on former prime ministers serving as foreign secretaries (Barometer, 18 November) did not extend to Sir Alec Douglas-Home holding the post twice, since the other occasion was before he was prime minister. Prior to serving from the Commons in Edward Heath’s cabinet, he had been Harold Macmillan’s foreign secretary from the Lords, as the 14th Earl of Home – before renouncing his peerage a few days after he became prime minister in 1963. While many foreign secretaries have gone on to be PM, only Home has done so from both Houses. Interestingly, the UK’s last Lords-based prime minister, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1895-1902), was also his own foreign secretary.

Malcolm Watson
Ryde, Isle of Wight

No smoking

Sir: Rory Sutherland makes eminent sense in his column ‘We need to talk about cannabis’ (18 November). However, I cannot let go of the story of my twin brother who smoked cannabis, which led to experimentation with harder stuff and to his death at 44 of an overdose. That, combined with a conversation when we were 35 about his having attended 20 funerals of people of his own age, persuaded me that cannabis, outside its medicinal use, is bad news.

Phillip Pennicott

London E18/>

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