Readers' letters: Never mind Brexit, thanks for passport

On 4 February 2016 David Davis MP, one of the many incompetent and out of their depth Brexit negotiators, wrote that within minutes of a leave vote, German car manufacturers would be demanding there be no barriers to access to the British market.

The Met Police have ordered German Audi A8 vehicles

As it turned out they not had to sit on their hands, as the UK car industry has been decimated to an extent that the Metropolitan Police is ordering its next fleet of armoured vehicles for government protection duties from Audi.

It seems that due to Brexit supply chain issues no British manufacturer, including usual supplier Jaguar, is able to meet their requirements.

Not to worry, the current government is hailing a new deal for farmers to sell pork to South Korea.

It could be worth a massive £1 million over five years. The relevant trade barrier had already been removed for EU farmers in September, so much winning.

According to latest models, Brexit reduced GDP by 5.5 per cent by the second quarter of 2022 – the equivalent of £33 billion or £12 billion in lost tax revenues.

By some estimates, if we had not had Brexit we would not require the austerity mark two now being imposed on us.

Never mind, thanks must be due for the black passports!

Graham Hay, Livingston

Japan shows the way on nuclear energy

Japan is to reverse its nuclear reactor phase-out. The ban was introduced after an underwater earthquake resulted in a tsunami wave which flooded the reactors and killed 15,500 in Japan in 2011. Not one death has occurred because of radiation.

Japan now intends to maximise the use of existing nuclear reactors by restarting as many as possible, prolonging the life of old reactors and then developing next-generation reactors to replace them. This will give Japan energy security and a carbon-free baseload energy.

This news will upset the anti-nuclear brigade. What will upset them more is that other countries will follow suit. France has 56 reactors and thus is less reliant on fossil fuels. The UK should now build these carbon-free reactors as fast as possible instead of relying on unreliable wind which over the last 12 months only provided 28.3 percent of our electricity.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow

Waking up to facing social injustice

When did we start to let those who don't know what woke means and are not even prepared to find out, use it in derogatory manner to belittle those who act in the true meaning of the word?

Woke is an alert to the injustices of racism, homophobia, bigotry and the rest; I was sleeping, now I'm awake. Woke is a much needed wake-up call to social discrimination.

Long before the word woke entered our every day parlance, most of us saw the need for new ideas and social reform to combat intolerance, but recently it has become difficult to debate what's offensive when some of us who refuse to even acknowledge what the word actually means, resort to childish woke jibes while implying that 'wokers' are just too quick to take offence. Let's hope that 'some of us' can up their game in 2023.

Jack Fraser, Musselburgh

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