Hate your heat pump? Then buy a better one! Letters in The Week on the pros and cons of heat pumps.

The letters below appeared in the October 23 edition of The Week having first been published in The Daily Telegraph.  It appears to me that air-source heat pumps are a waste of money and effort, and ground-source heat pumps are only viable if you have room on your land for 320 feet of trench – fine if you are fortunate enough to own “fields”!

Hate your heat pump?

To The Daily Telegraph.

I’m no expert, but I have had personal experience of a heat pump during the past seven years.  It was sourced and installed by a German company.  Does the Government know how cumbersome they are, and how they dribble water?  Ours is installed outside in our back yard, as there’s no way we could accommodate such a large appliance inside our home.  We have a thriving moss patch around it.

Do ministers know how they guzzle electricity in colder weather in order to function at all, or how loud they are?  I’ve had to apologise to neighbours many times over the years about the noise, which kicks in at the most unexpected and inopportune times.

Maja Dijkstra, Glasgow.

Then buy a better one.

To The Daily Telegraph.

Maja Dijkstra perpetuates the commonly held belief that all heat pumps are air-source, but this is not the case.  I have an excellent ground-source heat pump, which provides abundant hot water and keeps the house warm, with lower bills.  It has done so for 13 years.  Its disadvantages were its cost and the inconvenience of installation: it required two 160 foot trenches to be dug in our fields.  However, if all new houses had to have ground-source heat pump, the expense would be incorporated into the cost of the home, and the work could be done by the builders.  Air-source heat pumps are indeed noisy and don’t work very well when it is really cold.  People buy them because they are cheaper and convenient to install – but these appear to be their only advantages.

Elizabeth Jones, Chard, Somerset.

So it seems we will have to give up our efficient gas boilers and install new systems using an expensive and complicated technology in order to meet the Government’s “ambitious” net-zero-carbon targets. Yet we live on an island made of coal which also contains an abundance of shale gas.  Unfortunately our so-called Conservative Government led by Boris, and his wife, appear to be fully supportive of Greta Thunberg and in step with the eco loons belonging to Extinction Rebellion.

HS2's illusory benefits. The Social Democratic Party offer an alternative.

The letter below published in The Week (27 February) echoes my thoughts on HS2.   It also adds some pertinent points on working practices following Covid-19.  The letter first appeared in The Daily Telegraph.

 HS2’s illusory benefits.

To The Daily Telegraph.

The Government demanded that HS2 should be designed to reach a top speed of 250 mph – which many experts said was unnecessary given the relatively short distances concerned.  This restricts its route, as curves cannot be included, forcing the line through homes and sensitive areas, including 33 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and 108 ancient woodlands.

The argument that journey times will be shorter ignores the fact that there are no stations between Birmingham and London, so many of the headline time savings will be eaten up by additional journeys required to reach HS2.  Furthermore, even after the completion of the final phase, HS2 only reaches about half way up England, so the true long distances don’t benefit from the dramatic cuts to journey times seen in other countries.

Of course, the case for HS2 has further collapsed now that many people have discovered, thanks to Covid-19, that they no longer need to travel to work anyway.  I’m sure the vast majority of the population would prefer to have superfast broadband for everyone, rather than an over-fast railway for a few.

Gordon Findlay, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The Social Democratic Party has an appealing policy which advocates cancelling HS2 and using the funds on creating a new rail network in The North of England.

All well and good, but I would like to see funds spent on reopening, where practicable, lines and stations closed by Beeching. 

Railways should be operated as a public service under state control – something which the SDP also appears to support.  I reproduce below some of their transport policies from their website.  I hope they don’t mind, but they are ones which I could certainly vote for.

• Our railway system will be nationalised. Rail operator franchises will be taken back into public ownership as they fall due via a re-established British Railways.
• British Railways will be a comprehensive, fully integrated system encompassing track and infrastructure, rolling stock and stations.
• A Minister for Rail will be introduced, responsible and accountable for making the system work for the public and passengers.
• We will scrap HS2 and invest some of the freed-up funds to create a Great Northern Railway Network, better linking up the towns and cities of the North of England to unleash their joint potential.
• Funding for regional and rural bus travel will be increased in order to protect the viability of and patronage on essential routes.
• VAT on motor vehicles costing more than £35,000 will be increased to 25%.

 

Conservative Government Minister suggests it is impossible to escort every vessel through the Straits of Hormuz after British flagged vessel is seized by Iran.

Tobias Ellwood, an Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence, suggested on Sky News today that it is impossible to protect from Iran every individual British merchant ship which passes through the Straits of Hormuz.

My first thought was to wonder if he had ever heard of the Convoy system, my second was to wonder if Mr Ellwood regrets Conservative Government defence cuts which have resulted in the Royal Navy having only 19 frigates and destroyers. 

Who could not agree with the views of Lord West, the former lst Sea Lord, who was reported in The Telegraph as saying it had been “foolhardy” and “unacceptable” for UK shipping to transit the area without a Royal Navy escort?

The Telegraph reported Lord West, the former 1st Sea Lord, as saying it had been “foolhardy” and “unacceptable”, for UK shipping to transit the area without a Royal Navy escort.  He also said:

“We have to run convoys of merchant ships with a Navy escort so we can look after them. It was very stupid of us to allow a merchant ship to go through those waters before HMS Montrose was close enough to look after her.

As soon as we seized Grace 1 we should have been aware the Iranians would retaliate. We should have instituted protection measures for the control of merchant shipping and said to the Stena Impero to wait in port until we could escort you through the Straits with one or two warships.”

The following timely and highly pertinent letter, first published in The Daily Telegraph, appeared in The Week (July 20), before the Stene Impero incident took place.  If anyone in the Ministry of Defence or Foreign Office read it they obviously took no heed.

Navy blues,

To The Daily Telegraph

Jeremy Hunt is right to say that the Royal Navy needs to be expanded to meet today’s threats.

In 1987, an Iranian warship fired five Sea Killer missiles at a Shell tanker.  Fortunately, they all missed.  The next day, Mr Hunt’s father, the commander in chief, directed that three destroyers and frigates be permanently on station and all British ships be accompanied through the danger area.  We had 55 destroyers and frigates then.  Today we have just 19.

Vice Admiral John McAnally, national president, Royal Naval Association.

Taking the Brexit buscuit and leaving the crumbs. An exchange of letters from The Week.

I enjoyed this exchange of letters in the The Sunday Telegraph which was republished in The Week magazine on June 15.

Taking the biscuit . . .

To The Sunday Telegraph

If 52 per cent of the electorate say they like biscuits, it does not tell us what proportion favour particular varieties, such as garibaldi or nice.

Apply this to Brexit, and the vote does not indicate a majority for any particular deal.  In such circumstances, surely the democratic process demands public confirmation of any deal accepted by Parliament.

Robert East, London

 . . . leaving the crumbs.

To The Sunday Telegraph

Mr East’s analogy is flawed.

It makes no sense at all for those who don’t like biscuits to choose which ones should be eaten by those who do.

Michael Maughan, Tynemouth, Northumberland

MP's ducking and weaving over Brexit. Are they liars or idiots?

Isn't it fascinating to watch the vast majority of the British Political Establishment duck and dive and dodge and weave as they attempt to avoid referendum results and manifesto pledges in their efforts to keep this country in the EU.   

Their antics have led some to wonder if MPs are liars or idiots if this letter I came across in The Week (February 9) is anything to go by.  The letter was first published in The Daily Telegraph.

MPs: liars or idiots?

To The Daily Telegraph.

We are told there is no majority in Parliament for a no-deal Brexit.

Presumably MPs, who voted by 498 to 114 in favour of invoking Article 50 with a default position of leaving the EU on 29 March 2019, with or without a deal, were either lying to us or too stupid to understand what they were voting for?

Oliver Davies, Richmond, Greater London. 

Conservative and Labour manifestos "no longer worth the paper they are written on".

The shenanigans of some MPs, particularly Conservative ones like Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston, who throw every parliamentary “spanner” they can find into the Brexit “works” in order  to prevent the result of the 2016 EU Referendum being implemented, has not gone unnoticed.  

It seems that ever greater numbers of voters now know that Labour and Conservative manifestos are merely optional for those parties’ candidates.  Such manifestos are not worth the paper they are written on as this letter I read in The Week on January 19, which first appeared in The Daily Telegraph, wittily points out.

Lucky-dip politics.

To The Daily Telegraph.

Imagine if, on top of the chaos Theresa May and Parliament are wreaking over Brexit, Britain was asked to vote in a general election to “settle” matters.  Neither party would be able to present a manifesto pledge that all, or even a majority, of its candidates could support.

After the last election, at which both main parties said that they would enact the people’s wishes as indicated in the referendum, it has become clear that manifesto pledges are no longer worth the paper they are written on.  Who, then, to vote for?  Perhaps, like the lottery, our ballot papers could have a lucky-dip box on them.

Paul Baron, Knutsford, Cheshire.

Brexit surrender - echoes from the Forest of Compiegne.

It seems that some people see the Government’s Withdrawal Agreement with the European Union as a surrender document akin to the armistice which the Germans were obliged to sign in order to avoid a total military collapse as The First World War reached its climax.

The signing took place in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiegne.

The letter below appeared in The Daily Telegraph on November 12.

SIR – I wonder if the EU will provide Mrs May with a railway carriage in which to sign the withdrawal agreement.

JJ Hawkins, Nottingham.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, MP for North-East Somerset, has been quoted as saying the Withdrawal Agreement would mean this country becoming a “vassal state” under the control of the European Union.  I could not possibly comment!

A refuge in Britain for persecuted Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi? A letter to the Daily Telegraph.

Below is the text of a letter I sent to the Daily Telegraph on 26th November.  No idea if it was published!

"Theresa May says she will put her heart and soul into making a success of her Brexit deal.  It is a great pity that she has not the heart and soul to offer refuge in this country to persecuted Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi."

Charles Moore's column "No offence to sailors . . .", Daily Telegraph 26th November. Was this article fake or a mistake?

I often read Charles Moore’s column on the Daily Telegraph’s website and usually agree with his opinions.  Be that as it may, on Sunday the 26 November I was startled and amused at his reference to Penny Mordaunt, a Royal Navy reservist, as the Defence Secretary!  In fact she is the Secretary of State for International Development. Was this article fake or a mistake?

The article “No offence to sailors, but they are only guarding Buckingham Palace because there aren’t enough soldiers” bemoaned the “parlous state of our Armed Forces” and doubted that using personnel from the Royal Navy to change the guard at Buckingham Palace was an efficient use of resources.  Mentioning Penny Mordaunt, and giving her the wrong title, rather detracted from the thrust of the argument.

The mistake was corrected the next morning with Ms Mordaunt back at the DfID!  Nevertheless, it still seemed not really relevant for Mr Moore to mention her.
 

When all is said and done, I cannot see much wrong with the Navy, or the RAF for that matter, performing guard duties at Buckingham Palace.  They, and the Army, are part of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces - whether in a parlous state or not!