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Search forRNLI has no plans to stop using flares
Friday, November 21, 2008, 11:00
The letter, from Councillor Geoff Brown, refers to a decision made by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to reconsider its use of illuminating parachute flares.
Unfortunately, your illustration of his letter with a picture of an RNLI volunteer crew member holding a flare will have the undesired effect of misleading the general public over the significant differences between the two organisations.
First and foremost, the RNLI is a charity that saves lives at sea. It relies entirely on public donations to fund its operations and has no connection with the Coastguard, other than a very close working relationship during lifesaving operations at sea.
Furthermore, the RNLI has no plans to stop the use of illuminating flares for search and rescue at sea, and RNLI lifeboats will continue to carry such flares for the illumination of search areas during the hours of darkness.
All RNLI inshore and all-weather lifeboats carry white parachute flares for illumination and red parachute flares for distress. RNLI all-weather lifeboats also carry line-throwing rockets (pyrotechnics which fire lines to vessels that may be aground or in shallow waters that larger lifeboats cannot gain access to).
It is important that people do not get confused about our status and understand our position with regard to the carriage and use of marine pyrotechnics, and I would appreciate the publishing of this letter to clarify the situation for your readers.
Nigel Jones
RNLI Deputy Divisional Inspector for the South West
Sad day for animals
THE opening of Oxford University's controversial new animal research centre is a sad day, not only for the countless animals who will suffer and die there, but also for patients who may be denied breakthrough treatments because of the continued dependence on unreliable animal tests.
Medical research based on artificially creating a small selection of symptoms in animals that are similar to those seen in humans has failed time and again. Vital and often subtle anatomical, metabolic, physiological and genetic differences between species mean that results can be misleading.
A review published in the British Medical Journal in 2007 concluded that results from animal research into treatments for five different human diseases had failed correctly to predict the human outcome 50 per cent of the time: about as accurate as flipping a coin.
It is a disservice to science that a lab built at the start of the 21st century will still be focusing on experimental techniques from the Middle Ages, instead of championing cutting-edge non-animal technologies.
Toni Vernelli
Campaigns Officer, Animal Aid Tonbridge, Kent
EU gets it right
I DO not often have anything good to say about the European Union, but thank goodness it has told the Government it must sort out the problem of TB in cattle, badgers and other wildlife.
We are currently having all our animals tested every two months and have just been told that four of our Jersey cows are positive to the tests and must be destroyed. That makes a total of 24 this year – 15 per cent of the herd.
The testing does not only upset the cows, but we have noticed that it makes them ill and some go down with mastitis.
We obviously do not want it to spread to the rest of the herd, but that will never happen when we have sick badgers roaming across our fields.
It has been known that sick badgers can also spread TB and other diseases to humans and pets. Apparently, children are particularly susceptible, so people should be careful if they have children, and badgers come into their garden.
Michael Ashton
Torrington
Insult to the dead
I HEARD New Labour minister John Hutton, speaking from the Whitehall remembrance service, say the people being honoured fought, inter alia, for the right to choose our own Government.
What hypocrisy – we no longer choose our own Government, as that role has been largely relinquished to the EU Commission.
More than 75 per cent of our laws are made in Brussels/Strasbourg and pass into UK law via statutory instruments without any parliamentary scrutiny in the form of debate and vote.
The hypocrisy of Hutton and those like him insults the memory of those who fought and died for this country.
Trevor Colman MEP, UKIP
Newton Abbot
Let's end all wars
I WAS very moved by the service on Tuesday, November 11, of Last Voices of a Generation on BBC1.
We people all over the world have the power to stop all wars. Believe in the saying "the pen is mightier than the sword", and if all countries pull together, we can protect future generations and prepare the way for peace.
Saying this, there will always be natural disasters which will claim countless lives through the centuries and over which we have no control. But we have it in our power to end all wars. So let us start now.
S P Hirst
St Austell
Sort Osborne out
I AM sick of the "insular" David Cameron criticising our "globally" respected Prime Minister.
Many readers will remember – and many more, I suspect would rather forget – Black Wednesday, when we lost millions on the foreign exchanges, when interest rates rocketed to 15 per cent, when thousands lost their homes, repossessed, and when unemployment rose to three million.
Rather than criticise the one man with the fiscal experience and integrity to pull us out of a world recession, Mr Cameron would do better to discipline his own shadow Chancellor.
Peter Crook
Tavistock
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