Letters to the Fenland Citizen editor – January 6, 2021
We collected £1,000 and 325kg of food
We write on behalf of March Lions Club and the Rotary Club of March, and, of course, not forgetting Santa, to express our thanks to the people of March who have once again shown wonderful generosity during our nights with ‘Santa on Tour’.
We have been amazed at how much money we managed to collect, amounting to over £1,000 which will be shared between the four causes we were collecting for, namely, Young People March, 20/20 Productions, Christians Against Poverty and MIND. Your generosity will mean that these organisations will receive over £250 each.
As well as the above cash collections, we also collected food for March Food Bank.
The total donated was a magnificent 325kg, or nearly seven hundredweight.
This has all been handed over and will be available to be distributed.
Thanks to you all.
Derek Rutter
President, March Lions Club
John Lattimor
President, The Rotary Club of March
Awards brought back MBE memories
Congratulations to the four lady recipients of the MBE in the New Year Honours list.
It brought back memories of 10 years ago when I received my letter notifying me of my award.
I hope they get to have an official presentation.
My visit with husband Neil,
son Simon and daughter Lyn to Buckingham Palace was a very special day.
Margaret Oatey MBE
via email
Of course things can only get better!
After a wonderful ‘Merry Berry Christmas, we can now look forward to the crappy New Year’.
So, with great enthusiasm chancellor Rishi Sunak recently announced: “There are reasons for us to look ahead to a brighter future and what 2021 promises.”
He also added: “There is light at the end of the tunnel with this pandemic.”
Yes! He means: “We are so downtrodden and trapped in poverty and deprivation, that things can only get better.”
And ‘with a little help from my friends, ‘there is light in the tunnel at the end’.
This new light in the tunnel at the end clearly refers to the fact ‘we have never had it so good’, and, as a famous politician once said: “We are now entering the leisure age.”
Yes, mass unemployment, poverty, social division , deprivation, crime and theft.
So, as we reflect on this pandemic in the years to come, maybe we should rephrase Rishi Sunak’s ‘Light in the Tunnel at the End speech as a Churchill speech instead, and say: “For this is not the end of the beginning? But perhaps the beginning of the beginning of the end.”
Especially as Boris Johnson now says: “ The tunnel is getting shorter and brighter as we speed through it.”
Mark Burton
Chatteris
Sovereignty is what really matters in Brexitland
Brexit was never fundamentally an economic project. It was always more about what it said on the ballot paper in 2016. Brexit was about ceasing to be a member of the European Union. Leavers understood that. Remainers, in contrast, still struggle with it.
Leaving the EU was an emotionally charged political proposition, not an economic one.
It was a desire rooted in a vision of British sovereignty richly marinated in a heady mix of nostalgia and bogus victimhood, fanned by Britain’s media.
Trade deals, like economic arrangements more generally, are not Brexit’s first-order objectives but its second-order consequences. It was nonsense for Boris Johnson to pretend on Thursday that the EU deal will create “a giant free-trade zone”.
There was one there already. And this deal says little about services. What was finally agreed this week is a worse trade deal than we had as an EU member state.
Britain has expelled itself from the EU because sovereignty is what really matters in Brexitland, not trade.
As a result, for probably the first time in human history, these have been traded negotiations that aim to take the trading partners further apart, not closer together.
It is an inconvenient and ironic truth that all trade deals, including this one, will involve a compromise of sovereignty for mutual benefit.
That is what making deals means. But when the dust settles, we will see that Britain has had to give up some sovereignty in order to be able to go on trading with by far our largest and nearest market on preferential terms.
Nevertheless, none of this guarantees that Johnson is now home and dry on the EU trade deal. For one thing, Brexit will never cease to divide Britain. The issue will never be settled.
Given the ferocity of the emotions that Brexit will always arouse, this deal may prove a much bigger risk than anyone, including Johnson, yet realises.
John White
Wisbech
Out of the EU and the future is now ours
The battle has been long, it has been fraught, challengers have come and gone, then been left at the wayside for the vultures to pick at their lifeless carcasses, but once the vultures realise how rotten the innards of the Remainiac brigade are, they fly off, searching for fresh victims, those that aren’t so self-serving and ignorant, and not safe to peck over and eat.
David Cameron, George Osborne, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Major, Theresa May, you all did your best to thwart democracy, just as other former world leaders, such as Shinjo Abe, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama also did.
Let us not forget, also, that Jeremy Corbyn, Mark Carney, Vince Cable, Jo Swinson, Oliver Letwin and all the other politicians who tried to override our democratic 2016 vote for their own gains.
Many said the establishment wouldn’t allow the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, but we held firm, we held our nerves, and we got the result that Nigel Farage had helped us to bolster.
We are now out of the EU, and the future is ours to take back control of.
Thank you Boris, you ‘got Brexit done’!
A special thanks has to also go to legal expert Gina Miller, because without her interference during the arguments over Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill, we could have been aligned to much of the EU’s rules and regulations for 99 more years!
It’s done, we are now out, and I couldn’t be more proud of those that put freedom and sovereignty above their own personal aims.
There are still sticking points, like fishing quotas, which will be dealt with in five-and-a-half years’ time, a full decade after the referendum, but on the whole, the deal is a very good one for us.
Also, after the news that Michel Barnier is threatening legal action this year if we don’t follow the new rules.
We don’t need to, we are independent, and we will make our own rules going forward.
The Brexit deal isn’t a no-deal, but it is the next best thing, and finally, as Boris promised us, it Gets Brexit Done! We are taking back control of our borders, our finances, our legal system, our jobs and unfettered access to our country through the Schengen Agreement freedom of movement act and curbs on immigration.
‘So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehn, Goodnigh-ight
We (don’t) hate to go and leave this pretty (awful) sigh-ight.
So long
Farewell
Aufwiedersehn
Adeiu
Adeiu Adeiu
To yieu and yieu and yieu
So long
Farewell
Au ‘voire
Aufwiedersehn
Goodbye.
We leave and heave a sigh (of relief) and (gladly) say goodbye-ye
Goodbye!
I’m (very) glad to go I cannot tell a lie-ie
We flit we float
We fleetly flee (your dictatorship) we fly (to freedom)’
The sun has gone to bed (on our partnership with EU-uu) and so must we (to dream of the beautifully freed UK, ready to deal with the whole world, not on your terms, but ours)
So long Farewell
Aufwiedersehn
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye’.
Mic drop. Period!
Ashley Smith
March
