Letters: A staggering failure to address the impact of lockdowns on children

SIR – It is recognised that disruption in education during Covid lockdowns has resulted in significant numbers of children now regularly missing school. We know that several children were killed by family members due to a lack of contact with social services. We will never know how many at-risk children escaped this final outcome but nevertheless suffered during this time at the hands of family members.

For many adults, lockdown was an unpleasant experience that they never want to repeat. For some children it will have a permanent effect on the rest of their lives. For the Covid Inquiry not to prioritise the effects of the pandemic on this section of the population (report, August 15) is therefore quite staggering. 

I hope to see an immediate reconsideration of this decision.

Carol A Forshaw
Bolton, Lancashire 

SIR – Sadly, the extent of the damage to children caused by school closures during the pandemic will be of absolutely no surprise to educators, whose warnings were ignored amid the hysteria of lockdown.

Many implored the Government not to close schools, not just from an educational perspective, but also for social and emotional reasons. Given that it paid no attention, Anne Longfield, who served as Children’s Commissioner for England during the pandemic, is no doubt correct to surmise that it now doesn’t understand the scale of the problem (report, 
August 1).

In similar circumstances in future, the needs of the young must be the first consideration rather than the last.

Mark Mortimer
Warden, Glenalmond College
Perth

SIR – Fraser Nelson (Comment, August 11) is right that no one in Westminster is likely to ask the hard questions about lockdowns and mask-wearing as, sheep-like, almost every MP went along with them. But nor will the BBC delve too deeply into decisions made during the pandemic, since it promoted the draconian restrictions as if it were an arm of the state. 

Such is the obvious damage caused by both policies that I don’t need an expensive inquiry or BBC fact-check body to be sure that I will never vote for a national politician again unless he or she unequivocally states that they will oppose any future lockdown or mandatory mask-wearing.

Tim Coles
Carlton, Bedfordshire

SIR – Emerging data, including from Sweden, show the folly of lockdowns, but still the likes of Matt Hancock believe that future pandemics should be met with harder, longer ones. 

Opinion now seems to trump evidence, but surely when the public is swamped by another campaign of fear and told that the science is beyond dispute, it will not be so gullible.

Dr David Walters
Burton Bradstock, Dorset

Climate blame

SIR – Dr Roger Harrabin (Letters, August 14) sets out clearly the threats ascribed to climate change. The problem with the BBC’s coverage is that it appears to assume that if Britain simply got on with cutting emissions, these threats would diminish.

The BBC needs to make it clear that it is the governments of China, America, India, Indonesia and Australia who need to act. Without significant action from these countries, which currently does not appear to be forthcoming, nothing will change.

Britain’s involvement in addressing global warming is basically irrelevant, except as an influential leader in lobbying these other countries.

Adair Anderson
Selkirk

SIR – In 2019 a study by King’s College London found that an hour’s journey on the London Underground was as harmful as standing on a street corner in the capital for a day. Mayor Sadiq Khan should focus on improving air pollution on his own transport network before his revenue-raising Ulez is extended (report, August 15).

Roger Gentry
Weavering, Kent

Cancer targets

SIR – The Government is right to drop the two-week urgent referral target for a patient who may have cancer (report, August 15). The new target of a cancer diagnosis within 28 days of referral will be significant for those with the disease and greatly reassure others. 

The onus will now be on diagnostic units to ensure best investigation; for example, it should be possible for a GP to book an immediate endoscopy or a breast clinic appointment with same-day imaging and biopsy. Modern medicine has rapid diagnostic capabilities and this must be central to patient care. It is good that politicians are taking a lead from expert clinicians.

John Fielding FRCS
North Newbald, East Yorkshire

Subtitle slip

SIR – Some years ago I was watching a rolling news channel with subtitles (Letters, August 12) that described the weather forecast as “rain falling asleep in high ground”.
David Oliver
Langley, Berkshire 

SIR – While Britain was hearing about Dippy the dinosaur, subtitles referred to “DUP” the dinosaur.
Now that’s what I call political bias.

Patrick Miller
Seaton Carew, Co Durham

Conservative quandary

SIR – With politicians already lining up for next year’s election, I – like many of the Tory faithful (“Tens of thousands of disgruntled members forecast to leave Tory party”, report, August 12) – am in a quandary. 

It would be madness to vote the present bunch of incompetent inadequates back into power. I give you HS2, interminable strikes by train drivers and doctors, heat pumps for off-grid areas, hopeless softness on shoplifting, the poor implementation of Brexit, an out-of-control Civil Service, NHS chaos (there’s a four-hour wait for an ambulance in this area), illegal migration, Rwanda, and now the Bibby Stockholm and Legionnaires’ disease debacle.

No one is held to account. There seems very little that Rishi Sunak and his team can get right. So what do I do? I simply can’t bring myself to vote for any of the others.

Jeremy Nicholas
Great Bardfield, Essex

SIR – As someone who would have to be paid to join the current Conservative Party, I have sympathy with its disgruntled members.

Last week a deputy chairman was praised for using obscene language to describe the migrant crisis (report, August 9). This was a further example of how this once-dignified party has hit the buffers. My former Tory bosses in local government would be turning in their collective graves at the coarseness and divisiveness on display. 

This is a cultural watershed moment and can, in my opinion, only get worse until the Augean stables are cleansed and disinfected in the forthcoming general election, and a Labour administration is put in charge.

Judith A Daniels
Cobholm, Norfolk

Charity partnerships

SIR – If Michael McCalmont (“Good deeds thwarted”, Letters, August 12) were to contact his local Rotary Club, he may find that it has a charitable trust that could help him fulfil his wish to process his pledges for the charitable purposes he has in mind.

Over the years, my club, Darwen, has through its own charitable trust entered into partnership with organisations without charitable status to enable them to achieve their goals, without having to register as a charity themselves.

John Jacklin
Tockholes, Lancashire

Generation names

SIR – To add to the correspondence on names for grandparents (Letters, August 15), my parents lived in Rotherham, while my wife’s lived in Wigan, so the sets of grandparents were known by motorways: Grandma and Grandad M1, and Grandma and Grandad M6. 

As my wife had the same surname as me before marriage, the names stuck until the grandparents died.

Geoff Vaughan
Lowton, Lancashire

SIR – My grandchildren send me notes addressed to “Grandad Tatty-beard, Ingbirchworth”. 
Our postman always delivers them promptly.

Ken Grimrod-Smythe
Ingbirchworth, South Yorkshire

SIR – My granddaughters had quite a complicated set of grandparents and step-grandparents, but it came as a bit of a surprise when I discovered that I was down in my daughter’s contacts as “Normal Granny”. 
I was never sure how to take this.

Sheila White
Ringwood, Hampshire

A slim repertoire of reliably good sandwiches

SIR – We used to have a wonderful pub that only served cheese ploughman’s and ham sandwiches (Letters, August 14). 
They were made using fresh bread and ham from the bone. Sometimes it was possible to get a ham ploughman’s or a cheese sandwich. 

After many years of discussion we even managed to get tomato in the ham sandwich. Unfortunately, the pub is no more – it was replaced by expensive houses.

Ian Harvey
Salisbury, Wiltshire

SIR – I cannot understand why your correspondents are upset by the demise of sandwiches in pubs. If they are not on the menu, then ask. It’s always worked for me. Better still, you can specify the contents.

David Ellis
Ellon, Aberdeenshire

SIR – I find that, if one does find a pub that offers sandwiches, they are accompanied by a splodge of coleslaw and a few crisps, thus allowing the price to be doubled. I don’t like coleslaw, nor do I like being ripped off.

Robin Nonhebel
Swanage, Dorset

Rebuilding a piece of history, brick by brick

SIR – You report (August 15) the happy news that the Crooked House pub in Dudley may be rebuilt after a fire reduced it to rubble. There is a precedent. 

In April 2015 The Daily Telegraph publicised the illegal demolition of Charrington Brewery’s Carlton Tavern in west London. The coverage supported a local campaign to have it rebuilt brick by brick from archived photographs. Its reopening was celebrated in 2021.

Perhaps the finest example of rebuilding lies in the Belgian city of Ypres. Utterly destroyed by the battles of the First World War and now meticulously rebuilt, many visitors to its ancient cloth market and cathedral are unaware that a stone or brick was ever out of place.

Canon Alan Hughes
Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

SIR – The tragic demolition of the Crooked House demonstrates that greater legal protection is needed for non-designated heritage assets. Currently, a building that is not listed or in a conservation area has little protection.

In 1962, the Euston arch was demolished, which occasioned an outpouring of outrage, and galvanised John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner, among others, to campaign to save the country’s threatened heritage. We owe the preservation of treasures such as St Pancras station to their efforts. 

If the sad loss of the Crooked House similarly spurs us to do more to protect what is historic, full of memories, beautiful or striking, then some good may yet come of it. 

Rev Dr Michael Lloyd
Principal, Wycliffe Hall
Oxford

Letters to the Editor

We accept letters by email and post. Please include name, address, work and home telephone numbers.  
ADDRESS: 111 Buckingham Palace Road, London, SW1W 0DT   
EMAIL: dtletters@telegraph.co.uk   
FOLLOW: Telegraph Letters on Twitter @LettersDesk 
NEWSLETTER: sign up to receive the award-winning Telegraph Conversations here