Letters

Nuclear must be part of energy mix

In his article on renewable energy – ‘The future is renewable’, New Blackmore Vale, 5 August – Keith Wheaton-Green glosses over how to keep the lights on when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.

He is sceptical about nuclear power and makes a passing reference to batteries.

However, according to scientists at Oxford University, ten calm and overcast days would require battery storage capacity of 14 trillion watt-hours at a cost of £4.5 trillion using current technology.

This is equivalent to four times the entire public sector spend in the UK during 2020-21.

If our energy-intensive society is to end our reliance on fossil fuels to mitigate the effects of climate change, nuclear power will have to be part of our energy mix, alongside renewables, for the foreseeable future.

Gordon Lethbridge Sherborne

Keith Wheaton-Green has summarised perfectly the role of renewables in our country.

We have major resources in wind and sun to give us enough power going forward if we grab the initiative now.

The nonsense of supporting nuclear because we worry whether the sun will shine or the wind blow is old news peddled by fossil fuel and nuclear lobbyists.

Even if you close your eyes to the costs, the problem of radioactive waste lasting many centuries into the future just isn’t fair for those who follow us.

Surely supplying low-cost renewable energy to heat our homes, fuel our cars and support families is a fundamental right for all. The issue should be above politics and without the prejudice of billions of pounds spent by fossil fuel company lobbyists.

This issue affects the whole nation, so why not treat it differently. Proper informed debate by professionals with detailed plans available to us all and open to questioning at local and regional levels.

Reduce vested interest to a minimum with an outcome that offers the lowest costs, the best return for the nation and a hugely positive outcome for the planet. Make a nonsense of this frightener about keeping the lights on.

So many questions need to be answered – why are costs so high along with massive profits being made by the energy companies. Why should we invest in oil, gas and coal rather than get 100 per cent behind renewables – who knows what amazing new technologies and skills will be found.

Vince Adams Hinton St Mary

I wonder how many New Blackmore Vale readers are enjoying the warm and bright summer days but have half an eye, or more, on the thought of a long winter with worryingly high utility bills.

I read in a national newspaper this week about the possibility of places for people to go to warm up if their homes are too cold and they don’t have the resources to use sufficient heating.

The fact that this has been contemplated is shameful enough but where is the action to try to avert catastrophe?

So far, the solutions have been to increase taxes (National Insurance) but then give us money back off the heating bills. I’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but this feels like robbing Peter to pay Peter!

In the meantime, utility companies are safe in the knowledge they can charge what they like, make huge profits and laugh all the way to the bank. Still, at least our local MPs are on our side.

But wait, in the last issue they used their columns not to show solidarity with the residents in the area, but to comment on education, a waste incinerator and most important of all, which one of two fantasists they will back to be the new Prime Minister.

It would be nice to know that the people in power who have the ability to take action are busy planning how to help the country through what could be a very difficult winter.

Instead, it is up to people like Martin Lewis to make suggestions as to how to help. Too bad he doesn’t have the power to put his plans into action!

But we are not powerless in this situation. We must make our concerns and dissatisfaction about those in power known to them as I am attempting to do here, in the hope that this prompts action. I hope the people who can effect change are reading this and taking note.

Joseph Edwards Marnhull

For the last fortnight I’ve found every morning half a dozen or so small wasps lazily crawling around the window in my scullery.

They crawl around for an hour or two and then die.

Cartoon by Lyndon Wall – justsocaricatures.co.uk

During the day more arrive and do exactly the same.

I’ve really searched but can’t find where they are getting in, but the scullery is a single-storey building, so probably from the roof.

I’m absolutely in tune with what Katrina ffiske says in her article (New Blackmore Vale, July 22) and I’d been aware that we’d had very few, or no, visible signs of wasps in the house or garden for the past couple of years.

And we’d had many nests in the house and garden previously.

So the behaviour of this year’s welcome visitors seems noticeably odd. I’ve checked on Google but with little success and there’s no mention of any diseases affecting wasps.

I just wondered whether this behaviour was normal in July or whether there could be some other reason.

Angela Jones Via email

In response to the article on protecting our village halls (New Blackmore Vale, August 5), I point out that they came into use as a result of a fashion a century or two ago for installing pews in churches, thus restricting their use.

Nowadays, pews are going out of fashion and churches where they have been removed are being used for various activities as well as services.

For example, Beaminster Church on Wednesday mornings has a cafe with food and beverages while scattered in groups around the Nave will be musicians, artists, children at play or people just having a natter.

So maybe in some places it’s not necessary to protect our village halls.

Chris Slade Maiden Newton

The top story on the BBC News website this morning – August 8 – was about the disgraceful state of NHS dentistry.

This was a very serious research project involving nearly 7.000 practices – and the results should be sufficient to trigger the immediate resignation of the current Health Secretary, and for all the preceding ones going back many years to be made to publicly apologise for their collusion in this destruction.

Vast departments of expensive folk within the NHS and government have continued to enable some sinister force to drive this service into the ground. It is a national scandal and I am so relieved it has finally been given the exposure it deserves.

Why isn’t this service the best in the world? If there’s suddenly enormous pots of money for whopping great tax-cutting bribes, courtesy of Ms Truss, then there’s money for meaningful services.

I will not be voting for anyone at the next General Election unless my top three issues – NHS dentistry, the grotesquely iniquitous Council Tax and the energy supply mess – are all at the heart of their manifestos.

Clive Pallot Sherborne

Ellie is star baker

St Michael the Archangel Church hosted the Great Mere Bake Off on Saturday, August 6.

Elizabeth Howden, the ‘new-ish’ churchwarden, sold 81 entry forms with help from local businesses for the competition and entrants were asked to bake a celebratory cake. The church was set up with help from Judy Bickerstaffe and Sandra Fisher to get ready to show the cakes, offer refreshments and present the raffle prizes.

Samantha and Tracy from Lavender Blue Bakery, Gillingham, and Paul from Angel Lane tea room, Mere, judged the cakes.

Mere’s Star Baker was announced as Ellie Portnell (pictured), who made a scrumptious cake based on Eaton Mess.

Thought for the Day

by Canon Charles MitchellInnes, Sherborne Abbey

Each year there are points of contact between the Church and the agricultural world: Plough Sunday in early January – when work traditionally resumes in the fields; Rogation Days in May –when the growing crops are blessed; and Harvest Festivals – celebrated in early autumn, to give thanks for the harvest home.

Less well-known – and under-celebrated for many years – is Lammas, which falls on 1 August; so, we are now in what Thomas Hardy described in his novels as Lammastide.

The festival is Anglo-Saxon in origin, but first appeared in our lectionary in Cranmer’s 2nd English Prayer Book (1552) and has remained in the Book of Common Prayer’s lectionary ever since, though excluded from Common Worship.

Lammas is Loaf Mass, when a loaf baked with flour from the newly harvested wheat would be brought into church and blessed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls it, most felicitously, ‘the feast of first fruits’, and it remained a joyful celebration of the season of plenty at the start of the harvest, after the previous year’s supplies were running low.

This is not simply of historical interest. As tentative steps are beginning, at this moment, to release Ukraine’s bountiful grain harvest to feed millions across the world, we know that, for some, Lammas this year is a matter not only of celebration but of survival.