PHILIP Roe’s letter about electric cars (September 19) left me utterly gobsmacked.

Recent devastating weather, he says, shows we must avoid electric cars at all costs, because mother nature will destroy the infrastructure delivering the electricity to recharge the cars.

His argument has at least four - yes, four! - extremely serious flaws.

1. The electricity delivery infrastructure need not be so vulnerable, and in most places isn’t. Most places don’t have such severe storms.

Where there is vulnerability, it can be fixed, for example by putting power lines underground.

2. It implicitly assumes the petrol and diesel delivery infrastructure isn’t also vulnerable, as if fuel remains freely available in these storm-hit cities.

3. The severity of the recent storms is at least in part due to global warming. Electric cars are part of the solution to that. Unfortunately quite a few people still won’t accept this inconvenient truth.

4. The Fukushima disaster did not wipe out electricity supplies throughout Japan.

In this country, nation-wide petrol shortages happen more often than long-term wide-area power cuts. So come off it.

Alan Robinson, Lindley Street, Holgate, York

Who’s the Mr Moosa who made his mark?

AS I waited at York Teaching Hospital for my eye-drops to take effect I noticed a chair with the name Mr Moosa hand-written on the back.

Since I would imminently be unable to focus on my newspaper, which in any case appeared to be overburdened with reports of opposing megalo... world leaders threatening to knock seven bells out of each other, I decided to focus my thoughts on the more important matter of the chair.

I came to conflicting conclusions, namely that for him to meet the criteria for having a chair bearing his name Mr Moosa must be a man of standing, though not sufficiently so as to have it professionally stencilled as being for his exclusive use.

There again, might its name be not that of a person but a pet name for the chair itself, as for Herbie in the case of a VW Beetle.

By then, the drops having taken full effect, I stumbled to the next stage of my appointment.

The acuity of my vision being now restored I would be interested to read from any contributor to these columns who knows the reason for the chair with a name.

Meanwhile the world must go on.

Alan Appleby, Stockton Lane, York

Ills are a result of Westminster policies

BORIS Johnson is being totally disingenuous in laying blame on the European Union for the economic and social ills that beset the UK.

A woeful lack of social housing, poor infrastructure, low productivity and wages, in-work poverty that forces people to use food banks and a huge economic bias in favour of London and the south-east are just some of the policies that originate from Westminster, not Brussels.

Johnson is deluded if he thinks that we will benefit from leaving the largest trading bloc in the world and be able to forge new deals in quick time.

He and his acolytes are deaf to warnings from businesses and the City that they will move to the continent taking jobs and billions of pounds of tax revenue with them.

Maybe Boris could persuade those made redundant by the moves that they should fill the predicted vacancies in the NHS and the hospitality and farming industries when the migrant workers return home.

Dave Barker, Fern Close, Huntington

Thanks to those who gave to the appeal

IT IS with great pleasure that I have to thank the residents of York, and also visitors, who were in the city centre on Saturday, September 16, for their contributions to the Royal Air Forces Association York Branch Wings Appeal.

The collection raised a fantastic total of £1,630.28p which will go a very long way to helping all in the RAF family.

Thank you.

Maureen M. Smith, Wings Appeal Organiser, Royal Air Forces Association, Aldwark, York