How can Rishi Sunak sleep at night?

The Covid inquiry is likely to spread its tentacles into all corners of the pandemic, and while much of it is already becoming subject to spin, interpretation and cover-ups, I’m wondering how Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out brainwave will fare under forensic scrutiny. The Covid WhattsApp furore is likely to let rather too many cats out of ministerial bags, and we’re all already aware of the dissent within government.

“Professor Hindsight” may well be invoked in the argument but there were many calls from epidemiologists at the time to review the chancellor’s bid to support the catering sector for fear of promoting increased infection rates. Whether it was worth it remains a moot point, but I’d guess there are few who won’t be surprised if it turned out to have significantly added to our final death toll. How Rishi Sunak can sleep at night I have no idea... but I couldn’t if it turned out the virologists were proven to be right after being overruled in favour of commercial pressures.

Steve Mackinder

Denver

It amazes me how liberal progressives lament this country being a shadow of its former self like some ancient Roman equestrian family lamenting the glories of the Caesars! We may be one of the largest economies in the world, but that is only because we are riddled with debt. Our GDP paints a more realistic portrait of our position in the modern world.

What growth we do have is the result of constantly utilising cheap labour, rather than investing in education, infrastructure and work-based training. But should we waste so much news space on this? After all, France is in a similar boat with unemployment, taxation, debt levels and more citizens on strike. But do they hanker so much for the “old days”?

Europe is the old world, and its glory days of empire have long gone.

Steve Lawson

Address Supplied

Security minister Tom Tugendhat has just told officials at the Chinese embassy that running overseas police stations in the UK is “unacceptable” and that “they must not operate in any form”.

Fair enough. But Tom Tugendhat is part of a government that is tearing up the UK’s obligations under the UN Refugee Convention so it can run asylum seekers out of Britain to Rwanda. The plan for British migrant camps in Rwanda should be as “unacceptable” as Chinese police stations in the UK and equally “must not operate in any form”.

Sasha Simic

London

Under “Extended Producer Responsibility”, the government plans to tax those responsible for putting packaging on the market for the costs of waste collection and recycling – rather than letting the costs of household recycling be borne by local authorities. This is totally laudable.

However, why is the government penalising those companies already investing in superior closed-loop recycling schemes by proposing to tax them – even though this recyclate completely bypasses kerbside recycling?

Companies will have no choice but to pass costs on to the consumer when they can least afford it. My company has a closed-loop recycling system, which has both a better collection rate and a massively better recycling rate than household recycling, and for the government to penalise a business in favour of an inferior system makes no sense to us – nor to every MP we have discussed this with. Please, government, do not penalise those leading the way!

Lee Sheppard

Wiltshire