Appeasing China
SIR – I was appalled to see the headline, “Chancellor seeks reset of relations with China”, and to read of Rishi Sunak’s plans for developing trade. The article quotes Mr Sunak as saying: “We need a mature and balanced relationship.”
The People’s Republic of China runs “resettlement” and “re-education” camps that are indistinguishable from concentration camps; it has asserted illegal authority over huge tracts of international waters; it threatens to invade the sovereign and independent country of Taiwan; it has destroyed democracy in Hong Kong; it supports the dreadful regime in Myanmar; and it continually infringes its own border with India. Its programme of theft of intellectual property, and of espionage, is breathtaking. And of course it has given the world Covid-19, the gift which keeps on giving, for which it has made no apology whatsoever.
This is an entity that should be handled with disinfected tongs, not cultivated so that conscienceless people can make money with it.
Jolyon Grey
Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire
Covid in New Zealand
SIR – Zoe Strimpel is critical of New Zealand’s Jacinda Adern and her strategy for managing Covid.
It is true that, as in every country, the virus has created difficulties, and New Zealand is paying a price. How we will fare in the face of the omicron variant is at present uncertain.
However, to date, New Zealand has suffered just 52 deaths; the number in Britain now exceeds 150,000. Clearly it places a different value on human life.
C Brian Smith
Wellington, New Zealand
SIR – Research by credible institutions in the United States and Scandinavia suggests that, in terms of lives saved, the benefits of lockdowns were minimal.
Of course, government mantras justifying them changed from “saving lives” to “saving the NHS” some time ago. The argument was that if Covid overwhelmed the NHS then patients might be denied treatment. So instead, during the lockdowns, GP surgeries became impregnable fortresses and many hospital departments were shut and clinics cancelled. The result? Patients were denied treatment.
This rather obvious consequence seems to have escaped the allegedly very clever Michael Gove, possibly the greatest proponent of lockdowns within the Cabinet.
Sally Grossart
Edinburgh
Data wrangling
SIR – You report that a woman’s personal data, in the form of her own input to a survey carried out by Lambeth Council, was withheld from her after she had requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.
When information is released in response to Freedom of Information requests, it is released to the public at large – not solely to the individual who has asked for it. Public authorities are, for example, entitled to publish any information that is released under the Act.
It was correct for the council to withhold the woman’s personal input to the survey, in the absence of her explicit consent for it to be made public, on the grounds of Data Protection.
However, the council could also have asked her if she wanted her request to be dealt with under the Data Protection Act, which is the appropriate route to obtaining one’s personal data from a public authority without giving access to the general public.
Andrew Tranham
Carshalton, Surrey
Joys of parenthood
SIR – I was astonished to read James Innes-Smith’s views on parenthood.
“Sacrifice freedom for the limitations of fatherhood”? Being a parent is the most enjoyable and satisfying adventure that anyone can undertake in their lifetime.
Like Camilla Tominey, people in my generation anticipated with excitement the prospect of marrying and having children in our twenties and early thirties. We gladly took on the commitment of building a home and family while we were still young and energetic.
In our fifties, we have regained the freedom which Mr Innes-Smith prizes so highly, with the added benefits of having grown-up children, possibly grandchildren, and a close network of nephews and nieces and friends’ children.
We are indeed the generation that can “have it all”.
Frances Youel
Kiltyclogher, Co Leitrim, Ireland
What we owe Rome
SIR – Writing as an archaeologist, Peter Saunders (Letters, January 30) assures us that the Roman occupation of Britain was a disaster for the Britons, who “suffered military and economic exploitation”, and whose “traditional life was trashed”. Abandonment of Britain by the Empire in AD 410, he concludes, resulted exclusively from the weakness of Roman civil administration.
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The Roman way of life had become so firmly embedded in British society that the educated classes continued speaking and writing in Latin for a century or more after the legions’ departure. British kings adopted Roman names (Constantine, Gerontius, Ambrosius, Patricius, Paternus and, yes, Arthur), while the Christian Church imported from Rome became established throughout the land.
The powerful Roman military and naval presence in Britannia was there to protect the diocese from the recurring threat of barbarian invasion – the prevailing factor in the collapse of Roman Britain, which is ignored by Mr Saunders. In 367 the Picts advanced so far south as to lay siege to London, before being destroyed by an expeditionary force despatched by the Roman Emperor at Trier.
Well after 410, Irish slavers abducted thousands of helpless Britons, as we know from St Patrick’s distressing account. More than a generation after 410, representatives of the Britons sent a piteous appeal to Aetius, the Roman commander-in-chief in Gaul, begging him to despatch a force to repel the invaders and restore order in Britain. Later still in the century, the Britons sent a powerful army and navy to Gaul to assist pro-Roman forces in countering a threat from the Goths.
Britons had good reason to regret the demise of Roman rule, and virtually all relevant evidence indicates that they did.
Nikolai Tolstoy
Southmoor, Berkshire
