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Play by the rules

I took out pet insurance with a company here in Britain. Having a question, and there being a cooling off period, I sent them an e-mail.

I discovered the pet insurance company was in reality the middle-man. The underwriters for the business is a large German insurance company and all e-mails are directed straight to Germany.

I then discovered from a disgruntled customer, e-mails are never answered. That naturally rang alarm bells and I cancelled the contract. I followed protocol and let them know by letter of my intentions, but that didn’t stop them from trying to extract payment from my bank account.

Switching our energy supplier, I became aware two-thirds of Britain’s six largest energy companies are foreign owned.

Listening to family who have made their home in mainland Europe, British businesses haven’t enjoyed the success the German, French and others are having here in the UK.

Can anyone with an ounce of integrity reassure me protectionism doesn’t exist within the European Union? And could it be only Britain is playing by the rules?

As a former French Minister for Agriculture and now the EU’s Chief Negotiator, Michel Barnier, knows all there is to know about protectionism, that’s why a no deal Brexit is the most likely scenario.

William Abraham, Rodbourne, Swindon

Poverty is not a reason

My friend and fellow letter writer Martin Webb makes some interesting points in his response to Jeff Adams (SA 5 Sept). However, I fear he has allowed his emotions to get the better of him and as a result his letter loses some of his normal clarity.

To conflate Jeff’s sometimes radical views on refugees with the formation of the coalition government of Cameron and Clegg, and then add the scandal of abuse cover up by both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church may make for good headlines but neither has anything to do with the current refugee problem. A problem which for Martin can be summed up by his own words – “I don’t care how they (refugees) get to the UK or how many countries they pass through to get here”. Well Martin, I have news for you, while you may not care, I can assure you that many people do!

So what is a refugee, according to the most widely recognised definition (the UN 1951 Convention)? A refugee is a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. I believe the important word here is ‘forced’ as many of the refugees seeking a route into the UK have ‘chosen’ to leave their own country and seek a better life in a more prosperous environment; a point Martin makes when he includes ‘poverty’ in his list of reasons why people leave the place of their birth. While for Martin it may seem perfectly right and proper to include ‘escaping poverty’ as a justification to seek refugee status, he must surely concede that such a term would render almost every citizen of the African continent, millions from the Indian sub-continent and countless others as economic refugees. I suspect the founders of the 1951 declaration and those who added more extensive definitions in subsequent variations were alert to the dangers of widening the scope to the point where ‘anyone’ could claim to be a refugee.

Holding out ‘the hand of friendship’ as Martin suggests, is something the people of the UK and especially Swindon, do very well. However, even the most compassionate of people can be forgiven for being less amenable to the needy refugee when they see the resulting effects of an uncontrolled inward migration programme throwing up problems materially affecting their own well-being and that of their families.

Their fear may be irrational, but it is real and should not and indeed cannot be ignored or dismissed.

Des Morgan, Caraway Drive, Swindon

Foreign aid is a racket

HG Smith wrote to argue “for centuries” this country has given money to third world countries. He likes invoking big numbers to back wrong ideas (remember his 1000 years of isolation?).

Over that period, let’s be generous and assume he only means two centuries which takes us back to 1818, Britain’s rulers actually pumped huge amounts of wealth out of these countries. In the process of destroying the Indian economy, wrecking China, not least but not exclusively through the opium wars, when the British empire was the world’s biggest ever drug dealer, and in short violently holding down whole areas of the globe, Britain’s rulers pumped vast amounts of wealth out of the countries HG Smith claims were gaining.

And the aid issue which so exercises little England flag wavers today is far from designed to provide money to third world countries for their support. It is more like a racket which helps to pump wealth out of less developed countries into the coffers of British big business. For instance, $134 billion goes to Africa each year (mostly of loans, foreign investment and aid) while $192 billion is taken out making a net loss of $58billion a year. British big businesses are a major beneficiary in many other ways, (pushing for private profit-making schools is one, privatising water supplies another) and the facts don’t back HG Smith’s (or Bill Williams’) idea that it is about supporting foreigners.

Peter Smith, Woodside Avenue, Swindon

Uniform concern

There have been many articles in the SA over the months about school uniforms. Many High Street stores sell school uniforms at good prices, but for some reason the schools themselves will not allow children to wear them because they must have the school logo on them.

To get these uniforms you have to go to an outfitter that is recommended by the school themselves.

Do the schools get commission for the recommendations? And if so, is that the real reason why schools are insisting this?

Gary Darling, West Swindon