Letters: Despite the vaccine success, fear is driving the country into unending Covid restrictions

SIR – Increased testing is producing more results that are positive. An overwhelming majority of these people have minor symptoms or none at all. Deaths and hospital admissions are very low and are not increasing at a concerning rate.

The economy cannot wait until we are risk free. Fear must not drive the agenda.

Where is the balance of risk-assessment in evaluating the country’s health? Our epitaph could be: the Covid elimination operation was a complete success but the nation died.

Christopher Hunt
Swanley, Kent

SIR – Thousands, even millions, may be infected; most will recover naturally. Quite a few will be hospitalised, but the NHS should by now be ready for this. Sadly, a few will die – but fewer than in “normal” times.

So how will keeping me locked up help in any way?

Brian Foster
Shrivenham, Oxfordshire

SIR – England supporters on Sunday were hugging each other, social distancing was non-existent and no masks were evident. Loud singing and cheering were allowed.

We have just had to cancel our first Women’s Institute meeting in 16 months. (We are all over 70, all double-vaccinated and mostly widows.) Those of our generation have behaved themselves impeccably, and yet we are penalised in this way.

I think the decision to continue restrictions is unfair and unnecessary.

Jennifer Harper-Jones
Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire

SIR – Covid restrictions are to continue beyond June 21. I had an appointment at Guy’s Hospital on Saturday and took a bus from Liverpool Street station. Half the passengers were not wearing masks and I saw no one challenged by the driver.

On the return train journey to Stowmarket, a whole family boarded with no masks. What is the point of imposing rules if they are not policed?

It should also not be forgotten that those behind the “science” that forecast half a million hospitalisations in the first wave and led to the building (at great speed and efficiency) of the Nightingale hospitals are the same people now forecasting more dire outcomes.

When are we likely to see some common sense prevail?

Patricia Clifton
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Watch: Lockdown restrictions - What is changing, what is staying the same and why?

SIR – Why are we the public (responsible adults in the main) not allowed to assess our own risk? Government advice should be just that – advisory not compulsory.

Hugo W Taylor FRCS
Pleshey, Essex

SIR – Tim Stanley is right. I believe 1999 saw the high tide of civilisation, with freedom and progress most in balance.

Think what we were allowed to say and do. Go on holiday to Egypt? No problem. Use the internet without being scammed or tracked? Fine. Talk to a human being on a customer-care line? Carry drinks on to an aircraft? And, heaven forbid, smoke outside in the open at a railway station?

And what of freedom of expression? Say the wrong thing now and you’ll be in trouble, even if it is not a crime.

As Covid restrictions show, all that is required to eliminate democracy is for citizens to do nothing. Our leaders will take care of the rest.

David Henderson
East Molesey, Surrey

SIR – A friend flew from Luton to Edinburgh. They were all sitting three in a row, as in pre-Covid times, and there was no system for disembarking other than in hugger-mugger fashion. The flight was full.

Where is the logic of theatres being unable to open, even when they can have socially distanced seating?

Theatres have suffered enough. If rules are to be made, they should be seen to be fair and equitable for all.

Patricia Noel-Paton
Abernethy, Perthshire

SIR – The Prime Minister, being a Churchill acolyte, will understand my military analogy, emphasising the necessity during challenging times for pragmatism, courage and risk.

Had Montgomery listened to his medical team before El Alamein, to the extent the Government is influenced by theirs, he would have cancelled the attack. Too many casualties; aid posts overrun; not enough hospital space; the shadow of further failure. You get my gist.

Instead, the attack was mounted and the battle won, leading to the defeat of Axis forces in north Africa. Timidity now, as it would have done in 1942, will further undermine morale.

Variants of one kind or another will come and go for years and, frankly, it’s time to put our shoulders back and get on with our lives, free of the state.

Richard Drax MP (Con)
London SW1

SIR – We voted for Churchill and got Chamberlain.

Malcolm Whittle
Newbury, Berkshire

An EU fiefdom

SIR – The writing is on the EU wall for Northern Ireland. It is to be treated as an EU fiefdom, to be submerged gradually in the morass that is EU life.

The Swiss have wisely rejected being ensnared in the EU net. The United Kingdom has to draw a line. If the EU does not back down, we must consider seriously whether the Brexit deal is worth the grief. If this situation continues, World Trade Organisation terms must be considered as a more attractive option.

Clive Williams
Coedpoeth, Denbighshire

SIR – I understood that Brexit would free Britain from constraints. Instead, ordinary light bulbs are banned to keep in with EU diktats, and Northern Ireland is being forced to observe damaging EU trade barriers. What happened to our newfound freedoms?

Camilla Coats-Carr
Teddington, Middlesex

SIR – If President Emmanuel Macron really intended to suggest only that Northern Ireland was not a “geographical” part of the UK, then by the same token Corsica is not a “geographical” part of France.

Huw Wynne-Griffith
London W8

Watch: UK & Australia agree free trade deal

Shock and awnings

SIR – M J Pulman (Letters, June 11) highlights the lack of shop awnings.

Our wonderful village shop and post office is putting one up, after much to-ing and fro-ing with the planners. Are planning departments, for some reason (health and safety?), not keen on these structures?

David Jones
Barrington, Cambridgeshire

Election drama 1987

SIR – Lord Young of Graffham wrote of "last-minute moves that saved her [Thatcher’s] 1987 election”.

He writes that he grabbed me by the shoulders and said; “Norman, listen to me. We’re about to lose this f—ing election.” I certainly remember his excited concern, which I did not share.

More objectively, in The Times Guide to the House of Commons, June 1987, Robert Worcester of Mori wrote: “The Conservative Party was never in any serious danger” (of losing the election).

On its next page, the Poll of Polls shows that the Conservative rating never fell below 40 per cent, nor did the Labour rating ever rise above 37 per cent, leading to a final result of Conservative 43 per cent and Labour 32 per cent – a swing to the Conservatives of 2.5 per cent.

My recollection is that Lord Young had been in America in the initial stage of the election where the UK election might not have been well reported.

Lord Tebbit (Con)
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Kent’s migrant burden

SIR – The Government leaving Kent to deal with all arriving illegal migrants (report, June 12) is no better than the EU expecting Greece to do the same.

John Stewart
Terrick, Buckinghamshire

An OK boo

SIR – I learnt on Sunday that it’s wrong to boo England footballers when they “take the knee”, but it’s acceptable to boo the Croatian national anthem.

Jeremy Thompson
Braintree, Essex

How Cambridge stifled freedom of expression

SIR – Six senior Cambridge academics (Letters, June 12) insist, against some evidence to the contrary, that their vice-chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, is “committed to championing freedom of expression”. My experience lies on the contrary side.

During the Brexit debate in 2019 I wrote an article criticising an alarmist anti-Brexit statement issued by the Russell Group (which represents Cambridge and other universities). Cambridge had a special section of its website devoted to articles on Brexit – almost all of them hostile. An official told me that those with “current links to Cambridge” could publish on it, and I am an honorary fellow of three Cambridge colleges; but my article was refused, and my requests for a reason were met first with silence, then with the absurd falsehood that Cambridge was not represented by the Russell Group, and finally with a surly dismissive message from the director of communications, Paul Mylrea.

When I wrote to Professor Toope to complain about Mr Mylrea, he sent my complaint to be investigated by, of all people, Mr Mylrea, while refusing to answer me either then or on subsequent requests.

Only nine months later, when contacted by Charles Moore on behalf of The Telegraph, did he quickly ask his office to send me a message, which defended the tactic of silence to “shut down correspondence” and said that it would not respond further to anything I wrote.

That last statement was in some ways the most off-putting of all, as it meant that whatever points I made in reply would simply be ignored, even if they included (as they did) demonstrations of factual errors.

Silence, misrepresentation and the refusal to consider reasons or facts: these are not tactics that a university should adopt.

I sympathise with those Cambridge academics who are chafing under this yoke.

Sir Noel Malcolm
All Souls College, Oxford

SIR – I am responsible for scrutinising applications made by candidates for corporate engineer status through the Engineering Council. Recently one came from a Cambridge engineering academic. Listed as one of three main objectives for her professional development was “decolonisation activities”.

Should this be a criterion by which professional engineers are judged? Surely they should be concerned with making things work rather than pulling things down.

Professor R G Faulkner
Loughborough, Leicestershire

SIR – It must be a blow for Oriel undergraduates that Professor Danny Dorling is unwilling to teach them because of the college’s statue of Cecil Rhodes (Letters, June 14).

At least he’s a man of principle, and I am confident he will spend the hours of lost tutorials reconsidering his own title – the Halford Mackinder Professor of Human Geography.

Can Professor Dorling be ignorant of Mackinder’s history – that of an unpleasant imperialist of the first order?

Dr John Garside
Thirsk, North Yorkshire

SIR – When I was at Oriel, if you missed a tutorial, you’d be hauled up before the dean. Will the same apply to the boycotting dons?

Philip Womack
London NW1

Letters to the Editor

We accept letters by post, fax and email only. Please include name, address, work and home telephone numbers.
ADDRESS: 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0DT
FAX: 020 7931 2878
EMAIL: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk
FOLLOW: Telegraph Letters on Twitter @LettersDesk