Readers' letters: March 8

We’re urging people to spend this Saturday, March 10, taking action for butterflies and moths to mark the 50th anniversary of wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation (BC).

The charity is celebrating its landmark birthday by holding a UK-wide conservation day of action, where it’s hoped a record number of people will carry out practical work in their gardens or local green spaces to help their local butterfly and moth species.

More than three-quarters of the UK’s butterflies and two-thirds of our larger moths have declined in the last 40 years.

Half a century ago, a small group of naturalists became so concerned about the plight of the UK’s butterflies that they decided to join forces to protect them.

That organisation

became Butterfly Conservation and, 50 years later, the need for people who care about our butterflies and moths is greater than ever before.

You can do your bit for butterflies by taking part in Butterfly Conservation’s Day of Action on Saturday. By working together, we can all take some simple steps to provide butterflies with a future.

Whether you help manage a meadow, or can do some work in your own garden, please join in the effort this year to celebrate 50 years of saving butterflies and moths.

People can find out more information on events taking place near them by visiting: www.butterfly-conservation.org/events

Sir David Attenborough

Dr Nigel Bourn

Director of Conservation Science

Butterfly Conservation

How long to regain benefits?

“What has the EU ever done for us?”

The comments from Brexit supporters about the perceived negative effects of EU membership reminds me of the Monty Python sketch “What have the Romans ever done for us?

“Well nothing – apart from roads, clean water, sanitation, public health, peace...” and I could add central heating to that

list.

After the Romans left, we didn’t get decent roads until the 18th century and it was the Victorians who gave us clean water, sanitation and public health.

We had to wait until the 20th century for central heating again and I’ve been fortunate to live all of my 73 years in a peaceful Europe, unlike my father and grandfathers.

After Brexit, I wonder how long we will have to

wait to regain the benefits we now enjoy from EU membership?

Dr Colin White

via email

Eurosceptism

is on the rise

The result of the Italian election with the Eurosceptic Five Star Movement receiving a third of the vote is great news.

I congratulate the party, which is a colleague in the EFDD group in the European Parliament, in being the single party taking the largest vote and it shows the way the wind of politics is clearly blowing.

People in Italy, as well as elsewhere in Europe, are fed up with the EU’s misguided immigration policy which is leading to resentment and will eventually bring about the end of the failing bloc.

And meanwhile let us not forget how the euro has caused such painful financial problems for various Mediterranean countries, again encouraging resentment.

Euroscepticism is on the rise all over the continent and the Brussels bureaucrats only have themselves to blame.

They try to dominate, manipulate and bully member states but when it comes to elections and referendums, the public will put up with it no longer.

The majority in this country voted to leave and that mood of wanting to

take back running our own affairs is one that is spreading in other countries and I, for one, am delighted.

Paul Nuttall

North West MEP

UK Independence Party

Mountains out of molehills

We are seeing an increasing tendency for the Met Office to overemphasise snow warnings whenever there is a flake of snow on the horizon.

The problems are amplified, particularly by the London-based BBC, making mountains out of molehills when they get two inches of snow in the South.

I am of an age which can remember far worse winters but schools didn’t close and buses and trains kept running. Everybody just got on with life as well as possible.

Geoffrey North

Address supplied