LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters to the Editor Want to reply? Read something you feel needs commenting on? Our postbag is open! Please send emails to letters@theblackmorevale.co.uk I am writing, I’m afraid to say, with a complaint: I have very much missed the column from Vineyards in the last couple of issues, and demand its prompt return. I enjoy wine, but in all honesty I know little about it. I have always been happy to simply grab a good-looking bottle with a familiar name in my local supermarket. Since I have been reading your wine column over the last year I have been fascinated - what was once a rather intimidating landscape has become more understood, and I have become more adventurous in my choices. I have also been encouraged by the apparently genuine friendliness and charm of the column to bravely visit my own local independent wine shop - and was relieved to find it as friendly, welcoming and helpful as I hoped. Please bring Vineyards back. I require more education and good suggestions! Mr A B, Shaftesbury
(it wasn’t by choice that they went away! Vineyards have recently moved premises in Sherborne, and the understandable upheaval meant they needed a little time. If you turn to the Food & Drink section, you’ll find them back with some excellent advice for your Christmas table! - Ed) ***
For those who unbelievably still refuse the vaccination for Covid, here’s an extract from The Times newspaper of November 24, 2021 in their leader column. “Those dying in hospital have sometimes admitted they were to blame for refusing vaccinations.
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Exhausted doctors have given vent to their anger that they must still treat people whose plight was largely avoidable. Statistics show that almost all those now in intensive care, apart from those with underlying conditions, have not been vaccinated.” And for those who have had their two jabs, The Times adds (leader November 22nd) “A third dose takes protection from infection from approximately 50% to more than 93%.” We have just returned from M&S in Blandford. Approximately 50% of customers were not wearing masks. This is despite the fact that not only is the infection still with us, there is a more transmissible variant creeping across the world. Writing in The Times, a pharmacist, Dr Brian Walker, adds, “…global research has found that masks can slash incidences of coronavirus infection by 53%. The study found that masks are more effective than social distancing and hand washing. Other than vaccination or drugs, masks offer the best protection available.” And still we have aggressive and selfish idiots (Piers Corbyn comes to mind) with no scientific and medical knowledge who think they know better than the world’s leading medical professionals and scientists. BJ, Shaftesbury
(since receiving, masks have again been ruled as mandatory - Ed) ***
What a lovely article on page 28 of your November magazine about the old Co-op in Child Okeford (see Roger Guttridge’s Looking Back article here) . What a surprise for me to see the
photograph too, showing the staff line-up at the time. The young lady on the far right is my aunt Mary Wareham (later Mary Day) who lived just along the road from the Co-op at the Barracks, Upper Street. She worked there for many happy years and was well known in the village. Thank you for the memory. Judy Waite nee Wareham. ***
I am sure others will already have told you but the plane in the readers photos section in the October issue is a Tiger Moth, not a Swordfish. The CAA have a database called G-Info and anyone can look up any CAA registered plane (starts with a G-) and ‘EMSY’ comes up as a Tiger Moth to prove the point. Turns out I am a plane geek after all! Thanks for the Magazine. Colin O, Hinton St Mary
(you are correct Colin - I actually received rather a lot of corrections. I didn’t feel it needed me to print them all... - Ed ) ***
David Warburton MP has been vocal in his concern at the lamentable condition of our increasingly polluted rivers. And yet he voted against the amendment to the Environment Bill that would have prevented water firms discharging raw sewage into our rivers. Why would Mr Warburton and his colleagues want to stop water companies from having a legal obligation not to pump raw sewage into our inland waterways? In 2020 alone raw sewage was dumped into rivers more than 400,000 times, at enormous ecological cost. If the financial sustainability of a privatised water system depends on the wholesale dumping of raw, untreated sewage into our rivers, then that system is not fit
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