Times letters: Tariffs backdown and its effect on America

Sir, News that Jingye, the Chinese owner of British Steel, is threatening to close Britain’s last blast furnaces should be a wake-up call (“British Steel could be nationalised by UK government”, news, leading article, Apr 9). The UK has allowed a company from a foreign state that allows virtually no reciprocal access to its markets to take over a key UK business area, obtain intellectual property and make us more dependent on it by removing local competition. In what world do we think there could be a free and fair market when dealing with Chinese companies that have to do what the state dictates?
Michael Wigley
Truro, Cornwall

Sir, You report that Scott Bessent, President Trump’s Treasury secretary, refers to the tariffs, now suspended, as a ceiling that has changed to a “temporary floor”, giving more certainty (news, Apr 11). Really? I don’t know what Mr Bessent lives in, but a house in which the ceiling has, without warning, become the floor seems to me more the victim of an earthquake than of man’s considered choice.
Louise Mollo
Shellingford, Oxon

Nuclear power’s bill

Sir, You cite the estimated cost of Sizewell C nuclear power station as £20 billion (“Starmer powers ahead with plan for new nuclear plant”, news, Apr 10). But this was the original estimate and is a long way from the more recent figure of £40 billion, which itself is well below any final sum once the costs of capital, decommissioning and disposal are factored in. The prime minister and the power company EDF appear determined to see nimbyism as the main obstacle to nuclear power. Yet the laws of physics and the experience of engineers tell us that nuclear plants remain a complex, risky, time-consuming and expensive method of producing steam to run turbines. It is not too late to steer the funding in more productive directions. As industrialists and policymakers increasingly recognise, renewables, efficiency and storage offer attractive options for meeting our energy needs.
Dr Sarah Darby
Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Sir, Anupama Sen calls for an expansion of clean electricity from renewables as critical for a transition to lower energy prices (letter, Apr 10). Unfortunately the data does not support that view. There is a strong correlation between high electricity prices and a reliance on variable, intermittent, renewable energy. Denmark’s electricity is 88.4 per cent from renewables yet, according to UK government figures, the price there for a medium user of electricity is 32p per kWh. The corresponding price in France, which gets about 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy, is 24p per kWh.
Professor Peter P Edwards
University of Oxford

Young voters’ views

Sir, Catherine Craig (letter, Apr 11) claims Sir Keir Starmer wants to give the vote to 16-year-olds because they are more likely to be Labour supporters. Recent election results and surveys in France, Germany and even Norway reveal that younger voters, on the contrary, are highly likely to support radical right parties.
Bill Jones
Honorary Professor of Political Studies, Liverpool Hope University

Tories v Reform

Sir, Kemi Badenoch has from the beginning of her time as Tory party leader always maintained she has no intention of getting close to Reform. Some doubted her decision but now she has decided to throw in her lot with Reform after all (“Badenoch open to local Reform coalitions”, news, Apr 11). Mainstream Conservatives understand that any victory for a party so badly defeated at the last election depends on winning more of the middle ground, not espousing the extreme brand of politics favoured by Nigel Farage & Co. The majority don’t want anything to do with him. Are they now to discover they are being sold down the river by a leader whose uncertain understanding of what it is to be a Conservative is about to lead her party into a much darker place?
Alastair Conan
Coulsdon, Surrey

Costs of migration

Sir, The think tanks who proposed a “plan for migration” (letter, Apr 10) are right to question the cost of short-term policy fixes, not least in creating a toxic atmosphere that prevents calm discussion. But their plan will need to be more ambitious. Economic trade-offs are important but so are qualitative factors such as damage to the environment, risks to food and water security, the effect of the loss of open space on mental health, and risks to social cohesion. It also needs to ensure that whatever system is established is enforced. Too many people admitted for a specific need morph quickly into the general workforce. I have been pressing governments to establish an office for demographic change to undertake proper strategic analysis of this issue and respond to public concern. My private member’s bill introduced to the Lords would have done just that.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
House of Lords

Nature sacrificed

Sir, I couldn’t disagree more with your leading article (“Universal acclaim”, April 11) about the proposed theme park near Bedford. Nearly 500 acres of land are to be sacrificed to packaged entertainment instead of the potential restoration of some much-needed biodiversity by increasing tree cover and creating rural habitats. Because of investment and job prospects, you describe it as “rare economic good news”, mimicking the government’s mantra of economic growth at all costs. Once again, short-term economics trumps the long-term environmental health of the planet.
Colin Marsh
Gillingham, Dorset

Brain teaser

Sir, David Boorer (letter, Apr 11) suggests that “the myriad connections” in our brains undermine the concept of free will. Although he is right to imply that the anatomy of a mouse’s brain may be similar to ours to some degree, the human brain is more than mechanistic — we need to take into account the plasticity, higher cortical control systems and other factors that drive human behaviour. We are more complex than mice — although we are both mammals (and like cheese) the similarities stop there. The evolutionary changes that enabled us to conquer the planet are primarily due to the complexity of our brains, which even now we are a long way from fully understanding.
Neil Thomas
Alresford, Hants

Food for thought

Sir, The Last Supper that Jesus shared with his friends was a Passover Seder meal, which consists of symbolic ingredients representing Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt (“Last Supper was healthier than ours”, news, Apr 11). To compare its nutritional value with what Christians eat at Easter is a bit odd. We can’t know how healthily the first disciples ate three days after their Passover meal to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. But we do know he subsequently ate a healthy breakfast of broiled fish by the Sea of Galilee with his fishermen friends. Perhaps they went jogging afterwards.
The Rev George Pitcher
Cross In Hand, East Sussex

Religious equality

Sir, Terry Smith is correct to say that a blasphemy law applicable only to Islam is alarming (letter, Apr 10). Having always preferred the concept of secularity, I have found it gratifying to see the grip of the Church of England progressively prised from national institutions. However, it is worrying to realise that this has left a void that Islam is willingly filling. Criticism of religions is essential to freedom of thought, and blasphemy laws should be avoided. If they are to be enacted they should be equally applicable to all faith-based beliefs.
Andrew Millar
Wallingford, Oxon

Keeping data safe

Sir, Suggesting cybersecurity laws aren’t being consistently enforced misunderstands their focus (“Tightening cybersecurity laws won’t stop hackers”, law, Apr 10). Data protection laws make organisations responsible for protecting personal data. If there has been a cyberattack, we check whether protection was in place. If not, we can impose fines or reprimands but the focus is always on learning lessons that help others protect their data. Businesses and customers must be able to trust that digital services meet the expected level of security.
John Edwards
Information Commissioner

Queen of arts

Sir, In his review of the Duchess of Sussex’s Confessions of a Female Founder (“Meghan’s vapid lessons in self-love”, Apr 8), James Marriott inadvertently perpetuates the myth that Marie Antoinette’s dairy farm was “a pleasant game of make-believe for an idle rich woman”. As Antonia Fraser shows in her 2001 biography, the Queen of France was an intelligent, cultured and by no means idle woman. The simplicity of taste in the arts that she cultivated at her farm was far more modern than the pomp of Versailles. Marie Antoinette deserves better than to be compared to someone as pretentious as the Duchess of Sussex.
Daniel Johnson
London W12

Lip service

Sir, Shane Watson is right to say that few men can successfully wear a moustache (Times2, Apr 11). It’s a shame that in her list of those who could she fails to mention the most stylish of them all: David Niven.
Joseph Connolly
London NW3

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