'Keep jobs in British motor industry safe'

Jaguar Land Rover employs 40,000 people and there are a further 120,000 employed in their supply chain.With Toyota, Honda, Peugeot, Nissan and others, thousands of cars are assembled in this country.

Seventy per cent are exported, with 50 per cent going to Europe.

The other big market is China and that market has stalled.

Around 850,000 people are employed in the industry and 1,100 trucks cross the English Channel every day with components to fulfil ‘just in time’ supply.

The industry is already facing headwinds following the unfair demonisation of diesel and the downturn in the Chinese market.

If we leave the European Union, the automotive industry will suffer tariffs and customs delays.

The impact on suppliers, in particular, will be enormous, with a high risk of job losses.

I believe that we should remain in the European Union now these facts have come to light.

I am sure that, if we were to hold another referendum, with this new information clear to voters, the majority would decide to remain.

You might even agree, having seen how the structural decline of UK industry is being exacerbated by Brexit, that the time is right for a new party that acknowledges fact over fiction when tackling our economic problems – like Renew, for example.

Andrew Jeffery

Address supplied

environment

MPs failing on green issues

I sometimes wonder why we bother electing MPs.

They often see themselves as voices of authority. The trouble with that ‘theory’ is they only just get past the word ‘voices’ and at which point they let themselves down in spectacular fashion.

Take the case of the West Lancashire MP Rosie Cooper (MP makes climate change demands, LP January 22).

In that article, she says: “Fracking is not the answer to moving away from coal, oil and gas.”

Well, Rosie, you got that right (it is NOT the answer) but not in the way in which it should have been portrayed.

Fracking is a PROCESS, not a fuel, unlike the coal, oil and gas that you mentioned which ARE fuels.

Just to remind you, Rosie, fracking is a method by which natural gas - consisting mainly of methane - is extracted from shale underground.

Now, perhaps you could answer me this conundrum?

We, the people, are constantly being told by ‘your lot’ that the cost of producing energy (=electricity) by greener alternatives (solar panels, wind farms and hydropower) is coming DOWN.

So how come our energy bills, particularly that of electricity, are always going UP?

I’d love to ‘buy-in’ to that - and, in the future, I’ll either HAVE to or be devoid of all electricity-reliant gadgets which will not work - but that will indeed be sometime into the future because, for now, we have to be reliant upon those fossil fuels in order to build these solar panels, wind farms, pictured, and hydro-electricity plants, as well as moving the materials and semi-assembled machinery around the country.

We should have been starting this many years ago and all new houses now being built should automatically be having solar panels fitted to their roofs or elsewhere on the property ... but are they?

And where is the encouragement from Government to be doing this? Oh yes, some short-term thing and with those grants now being reduced. I despair at the ineptitude of our MPs to get a grip with this issue.

I think I CAN speak with some authority having taught about the environment for 30 years and majored in it for my Honours Degree.

Just how many times does Sir David Attenborough have to give the inept rulers of this world - I am sure we can all think of one in particular - the eye-openers to this or that environmental problem?

A local Environmentalist