I read with interest Robert McLiam Wilson’s article on how the Nice attack is remembered in France (“In a deserted courtroom, the grim details of the Nice atrocity go mostly unnoticed”, Comment). He raises the question of what a trial can achieve when the guilty party died at the scene of his crime. It’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since I escaped the attack: what would justice look like for the 86 victims and their loved ones?
In some ways, a trial seems pointless when Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel is not there to answer for his crimes. However, in France as in the UK, trials are one of the ways we try to make sense of senseless acts. McLiam Wilson emphasises how much time has been allocated to letting witnesses and loved ones of the victims speak. I’m glad. If we can’t bring back the dead, at least we can honour them by remembering not only how they died, but how they lived.
Equally, when you have witnessed something horrific, something most people can’t imagine, it helps to speak about it. It helps to be less alone with it. As McLiam Wilson points out, most people don’t want to hear about dead kids. It can be hard to find a space to talk about what you’ve experienced. I hope this public recognition of what happened might help those who were caught up in it or lost loved ones.
Cameron Millington
Carshalton, London
Agricultural Liverpool
Your article “Down on the city farm” (Magazine) states that it is 50 years since the first urban farm opened. My mother was born in 1921 and her great friend from school was the daughter of Mr and Mrs Wynne, who had a farm on Smithdown Road in Liverpool. She became my godmother.
When my sister and I were little, we regularly went to the farm for tea and played in the farmyard and the lofts above the shippons. There was a dairy herd and hens. Milk and eggs were sold from the farmhouse and Mr Wynne had a milk round and made his deliveries from a horse and cart. The cows were put out to grass in the summer at the end of Penny Lane. I was born in 1944, so by any calculation it is great deal more than 50 years since the first urban farm was opened.
Christopher Elwen
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Both sides at fault over Brexit
William Keegan might care to remember that, although the Conservatives won the last election on a Brexit ticket, Labour was certainly not promoting Remain during the unfortunate referendum (“In my view”, Business). Even now, the economic and employment issues the UK faces as a result of Brexit are never openly admitted by any party, especially in parliament. Which politician would dare to suggest renegotiating for a single market and free movement deal?
Tanya Firth
London W14
What Sunak means to us
I read with interest Sonia Sodha’s article on Rishi Sunak (“Our PM’s politics are wretched. But as a British Indian, I see why his rise to the top matters”, Comment). I am a British Asian doctor and my wife is a British Asian pharmacist. We are both immigrants to this country. So our children have similar family backgrounds to Sunak. Growing up in 1980s Britain, I frequently suffered overt racism of the sort that is thankfully rarely encountered nowadays. But even at university, I encountered more subtle racism, such as pressure to convert to Christianity from “friends” who thought I was an idol worshipper. I remember one calling a statue I kept in my car of the elephant-headed god Ganesh a “lucky charm”.
Sunak’s outward expression of his faith makes him a role model beyond skin deep. He is a practising, informed Hindu who has legitimised our religion in the national consciousness, and that is far more significant than the amount of melanin he has in his skin. The point is the message it sends to our children and the world to have an unashamed Hindu in the highest office in the land. It gives us hope that our children can be themselves, and believe what they believe without apology or excuse, yet still succeed in life.
Sunak embodies the central Asian value of hard work and, irrespective of our individual politics, we in the British Asian community are entirely proud of him (though of course I’m sure his parents are still a little gutted he never became a doctor!).
Professor Prasanna Sooriakumaran
London SW19
Just stop climate catastrophe
Indigo Rumbelow, of Just Stop Oil, asks a good question: why does it have to be either or (“Will disruptive action help save the planet?”, Comment)? I support any and every action that brings the climate catastrophe, and its siblings, mass extinctions and resource overconsumption, to people’s attention. Surely this is how most of us who care about this existential problem operate in our personal life. I have friends who refuse to listen to the reality, simply shutting off. These people have to be won round by degrees, with examples that are local and can’t be ignored. On the other hand, there are friends who have some knowledge of what is going on, accept it, but don’t have ideas of how they can change the way they live and thus be an example to others. “I can’t go vegetarian,” they claim, “it’s too difficult.” So I ask them that if they were told that if they carried on eating meat they would dramatically shorten their lives, would they give it up? Well, yes, of course. OK, so you are prepared to shorten the lives of the next generation and possibly the planet so that you can enjoy your meals a little more?
Moderate Flank is right that we all have to do our bit because our governments won’t. If we all do what we can to mitigate our own carbon footprint, we will influence businesses and governments. It has to be leadership from the bottom: a mass movement to change the way we do things, one act at a time.
By all means throw tomato soup at a painting behind a pane of glass, as Just Stop Oil did. Stop cars and planes from polluting our planet by whatever means. At the same time, speak to individuals: empower them to take the right decisions, invest what money they have carefully, buy as little as they can get away with and mainly secondhand, stop flying. We don’t have to revert to the Middle Ages, but every choice we make has consequences. Most people in Pakistan and much of Africa effectively have no choice. We do.
We need both sides of the movement – and all stages in between.
Annie Hill
Bay of Islands, New Zealand
Tech savvy?
At last someone is publicising the fact that 3 million mostly elderly people cannot make simple transactions due to lack of technological skills or access (“Left in isolation: how the online revolution has failed our elderly”, Cash). This is a scandal.
Paper communications often come without a phone number for queries, and many public institutions are disappearing behind a digital-only barricade to avoid employing people to talk to customers. Even if one is connected to the internet, the simplest transactions seem to demand you set up passwords which then have to be remembered. Mobile phones demand a level of expertise and dexterity which the elderly may not have. It is time to restore alternative ways of contacting businesses and public bodies, even if on a smaller scale than before.
Jane Ghosh
Bristol
Expletives resounded around our house at the idea of over-75s being technologically illiterate. Like many over-75s, I was introduced to computers in the mid-80s. In 40 years, we have grown with the technology and are perfectly capable. Indeed my 99-year-old uncle in Montreal was playing Words With Friends with me until a few weeks before his death last month.
One advantage of being an “old lady” purchasing PCs/tablets/smartphones is being able to wipe the smile off the faces of patronising young men (nearly always men) with my knowledge, which is often greater than theirs. Makes my day.
Jennifer Henley
London W5
