Letters: Apparently the Green Party are the ‘vibes era’? Make it make sense!

Green Party leader Zack Polanski responds to Paul McNamee’s editor’s letter to compare their record to Labour’s.

Green Party leader responds

Greens – lower bills through nationalising public services, wealth tax on assets and huge investment in public services. Labour – ID cards, random statements about flags and austerity 2.0. But apparently the Green Party are the “vibes era?”

Make it make sense!

ZackPolanski, X

Peasant dreams

I may not have two master’s degrees in medieval studies, but I am a medieval peasant who has survived many hundred winters. Your article is wrong to claim that in winter there is no work to do on the land and all we have to do is sit around writing letters to each other and reading the Bible.

Ploughing for winter wheat begins early in the new year on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night. It is the best time to dung the fields for the frost and rain to mix it well into the soil, there is hedging and ditching to do, and in our barns we thresh out the corn harvested in autumn. Winter is as busy a time as any other.

As for reading and writing, the best most of us can manage is to write our name, paper is unknown and parchment is expensive and better used for covering windows so they let in the light but not the weather. 

Here in our village, only the parson and the reeve can read, there is only one Bible and that is in the church, and if Parson were to let us read it (and we had learned to read), we could understand little of it because it is all in Latin.

I paid a scrivener to pen this for me. It cost me a groat but it is money well spent as I feel very strongly about being misrepresented.

Nicholas Ford

Read more:

• He’ll ‘never be prime minister’, but how will Zack Polanski’s Green Party victory change UK politics?
• ‘Ex-miners are voting Green’: Why the Green Party has made gains in industrial heartlands
• ‘Starmer needs to be more scared of us than Reform’: Zack Polanski on how the Greens can outflank Farage

Church speak

I was saddened to read Charlotte Church’s Letter to My Younger Self, not so much because of what she described as her “tumultuous life”, but because of the language she used to describe it. Whether using the f-word comes naturally to her or whether she thinks it expresses some sort of bravado or a desire to counter her “angelic” image as a singer, I find it quite unnecessary and sad. 

I certainly would not want to use this language to write to any 16-year-old, and I’m sorry if she is using it within her own family. Of course, she is not alone in having this inability to stick to polite language, as is frequently shown by other contributors’ articles. It’s a pity that good ideas are often marred by the language used to express them, but I continue to read Big Issue mainly to support your sellers. 

Colin Marsh, Dorset

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Meanwhile in Japan

Save it

There is very little point in saving for a rainy day if the benefits system, or the pension system, punishes you for doing the right thing at the right time. I used to believe this was just an issue that affected pensioners who were going into a care home, who were then told they needed to sell their homes to cover costs. Now it seems that anyone can be punished for saving for a rainy day! Why should anyone, of any age, be punished or penalised for putting money aside? Weirdly enough, if you’re rich, wealthy, famous or powerful, you can avoid paying any taxation on your earnings by using legal tax-dodging schemes, yet if you save and get interest on your savings you can, and you will, be punished for doing so.

Ged Jarvis, Manchester

Responses to Keir Starmer’s interview on Digital ID

I think actual services and homes would be better. What good is a passport to services that don’t exist? You may as well look for the yellow brick road.

Deborah Yesthat’sme, Facebook

Those without a smartphone are already left behind. You can’t do much nowadays without filling in an online form or using an app.

Rachel McNulty, Facebook

If you’re homeless, on extremely low income, don’t have access to the latest generation devices and have little access to electricity to charge a smartphone, how the heck are you expected to have the capacity to hold a digital ID? It’s ridiculous.

Bryceoninsta, Instagram

He’s lying – this will not help homeless people, poor people, elderly people, or disabled people. Or any people, just corporate interests and authoritarian government.

Da1sy3321, Instagram

He completely avoided mentioning how expensive passports and driving licences are when asked the question. Completely delusional and out of touch!

Emllyrse, Instagram

In just a few years petrol stations will use it to identify you. Before you know it, everyone uses it, whether or not you’ve designed it with control in mind. Technology advances in the direction of the infrastructures. But for Starmer to deny it’s a possibility is just stupidity.

Gamesgamesee, TikTok

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