To Star reporter, Mark Andrews

 25 August 2021

I picked up the Star at the Minsterley Show on Saturday and enjoyed reading your column.  Some readers will take it seriously and believe every word as gospel!

Boris Johnson had months to persuade Biden (not to pull out of Afghanistan).  Yet, you wrote, he "could do nothing about it."  I don't think he even tried in NATO to get them to think again, did he?

Many readers will believe 7% instead of 2% would have made all the difference in Afghanistan and given us victory instead of defeat.

Many readers will think we can go marching into any old poor and defenceless country like Afghanistan, not just the actual four times since 1839 but forty times, especially if we maintain the overseas aid cut from 0.7% to 0.5% and up armaments expenditure from 2 to 7%.

You wrote about "defending our realm" and Britannia ruling the waves.  Is this exactly what we are doing with our £3.5 billion aircraft carrier sailing the waters of the South China Sea, right now?  You and your readers are thrilled with that.  But what if China followed our example and sailed their warships in the North or Irish Seas or the English Channel?  And, we are even getting a new £250 m 'Britannia' to further shock and awe the world with another vanity project to impress!

To Brian Angell

Dear Brian - and copied to the Chronicle editors.

Thanks for your email.

My wife, Linda is the younger sister of Chrissie Verduyn, who passes on her copy of the excellent, the very professionally produced, month after month, 'Clun Chronicle'.  We live in Halesowen on the edge of the Black Country and next to our NW Worcestershire green belt.

Chrissie presented the Clun Climate Action Plan from the CCEG in June and your good self, on behalf of the Town Council, endorsed it and gave every encouragement for progress to be made in three areas that Alison Weeks wrote about in the July issue.

My concern is that human-induced climate change is still not making a difference in every area of our lives.  Climate science is now 160 years old but we still carry on regardless with business as usual, of economic growth at the expense of the planet's fast changing life support systems.

The NFU produced their brochure about net zero CO2 emissions that I picked up at the Minsterley Show.  It was produced two years ago.  I read that 10% of our nation's greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture.  Now, the first-rate, Adam Henson on BBC's 'Country File' is getting down to making further changes on his farm in Gloucestershire.  

Matt Jones, in the July Chronicle, wrote that his Acton Farming Company goes in for a four-year rotation of crops, minimum tillage and, practices that reduce "the reliance on man-made and mined fertilisers - often produced halfway around the world".  That is excellent as, it seems, is everything else he is doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and impacts.  Your farmers are probably way ahead of Adam Henson!

As for me, I'm more in favour of Matt's arable farming because I think we need to eat much less meat and more plants for a more sustainable lifestyle that would give lower impacts from our fossil fuels/greenhouse gases intensive lives.

Now we have heard from Matt, can our livestock farmers boast of their farming practices that are "treading more lightly on the planet" (Jonathon Porritt)?

With best wishes

Tim

Mark's tongue in cheek column in the 'Shropshire Star'

Dear Mark

I picked up the Star at the Minsterley Show on Saturday and enjoyed reading your column.  Some readers will take it seriously and believe every word as gospel!

Boris Johnson had months to persuade Biden.  Yet, you wrote, he "could do nothing about it."  I don't think he even tried in NATO to get them to think again, did he?

Many readers will believe 7% instead of 2% would have made all the difference in Afghanistan and given us victory instead of defeat.

Many readers will think we can go marching into any old poor and defenceless country like Afghanistan, not just the actual four times since 1839 but forty times, especially if we maintain the overseas aid cut from 0.7% to 0.5% and up armaments expenditure from 2 to 7%.

You wrote about "defending our realm" and Britannia ruling the waves.  Is this exactly what we are doing with our £3.5 billion aircraft carrier sailing the waters of the South China Sea, right now?  You and your readers are thrilled with that.  But what if China followed our example and sailed their warships in the North or Irish Seas or the English Channel?  And, we are even getting a new £250 m 'Britannia' to further shock and awe the world with another vanity project to impress!

Best wishes