The mortgage crisis seals it – working people need more support

I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding the recent increase in mortgage rates and its potential repercussions, particularly for young families like mine. As hardworking individuals employed in the restaurant business, where wages have not kept up with inflation, this development poses significant challenges.

The current situation begs the question: what is the point of working tirelessly when a substantial portion of our salaries is consumed by bills and high interest rates? The burden placed on working-class families is seemingly insurmountable, leading to financial strain and limited opportunities for growth and prosperity.

This mortgage rate hike not only places an undue burden on families but also seems to favour financial institutions, allowing them to generate increased profits. It becomes disheartening to witness the growing disparity between the working class and those with significant capital, including influential figures such as the prime minister.

I urge you to shed light on this issue and bring attention to the struggles faced by hardworking families like mine. By raising awareness, we can encourage a broader discussion on the need for fairer policies that support the financial stability and wellbeing of working-class individuals.

Salvatore Russo Address supplied

Putin’s clear fear of Nato expansion, though especially the deployment of additional US anti-nuclear missile defence systems, further into eastern Europe is typically perceived by the West as unmerited paranoia.

Surely he must realise that the West, including Nato, would never initiate a nuclear weapons exchange. But then again, how can he – or we, for that matter – know for sure, particularly with the US?

There’s a presumptive, and perhaps even arrogant, concept of American governance as somehow, unless physically provoked, being morally/ethically above using nuclear weapons internationally. But how true is that?

Frank Sterle Jr Canada

I was greatly heartened to read what Michel Barnier and Gina Miller wrote on Friday about the UK’s future relationship with the EU.

We are now, hopefully, rid of the egregious Johnson, the main architect of the Brexit disaster. Unfortunately, the Labour Party seems not yet to have seen the light and realised that rejoining is not only growing in desirability for most of the electorate but is also quite likely to be a possibility.

I expect to be marching, yet again, in support of a close relationship between the UK and the EU, and hope that in future our politicians will have the sense to listen.

Susan Alexander South Gloucestershire

When I was a child in the late 1960s, there was a man wearing a sandwich board who assiduously walked up and down Bexleyheath Broadway. His message was short and unambiguous: “The end of the world is nigh.”

I remember asking my parents about him and they mentioned his long-standing vocation and they even knew his name, which is long forgotten by me sad to say. Then around the turn of the 1970s, he was no longer there. I’ve always wondered what happened to him. Anyway, thanks to the excellent article by John Hyde, I thought about this prognosticator of doom for the first time in decades.

I now have a theory that when he left my hometown he moved to Clacton, and paraded up and down the seafront dutifully for years. Worryingly it seems many of the good people of Clacton probably connected his message with the coming of our common market membership, and then the steady path to the EU.

Most of the Kent coast has suffered from 50-odd years of decline also and, like the Essex coast, none of it was linked to our EU membership. Just imagine how destitute such areas would be if we had never joined?

Robert Boston Kent