What’s the point?
Sir: Your editorial (‘Net loss’, 2 March) sets out how the decarbonisation industry is a net drain on the British economy. While you mention that the UK has already decarbonised faster than any other European country, the fact that the UK produces less than 1 per cent of global carbon emissions to start with means that even if we became carbon neutral overnight, it would have precisely no impact on global climate change. So the 765,000 people working in that sector are not only taking skilled labour away from sectors that are actually economically productive, but they are on a hiding to virtue-signalling nothing. They might as well be digging holes and filling them in again.
Lewis Feilder
London SW6
The taste of Mayo
Sir: Lord Sumption, in his review of Remembering Peasants (Books, 24 February), asserts that ‘modern Ireland is immeasurably happier for having confined its peasants to museums’. My mother would disagree. She was raised on a smallholding of rugged and rocky land in a tiny village on the western seaboard in Co. Mayo. She was the youngest of ten, and her memories are far from miserable. In the summer, manual labour was rewarded with the pleasurable feeling that comes from physical activity and working with the source of life. In winter, the neighbours would call round and join in with games and festivities.
And today? The lucky ones in the city work in sedentary office jobs and go to the gym in the evening. The unlucky ones – the majority – struggle along in a new type of subsistence, doing menial jobs but without the fresh air, exposure to nature and community of times past.
I have great respect for Lord Sumption, but I think here he emphasises collective material progress over individual experience – where life, after all, is lived.
Columb O’Donnell
Dublin
Pause the applause
Sir: Ysenda Maxtone Graham is quite right about the unsuitability of applause at funerals (‘Sad Clappies’, 2 March), and also after such works as Bach’s St Matthew Passion.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in