In 2016, three young English people from Sussex invented a solar-powered boat called the Sea-Vax. Floating in the Pacific Ocean there is an area twice the size of France which is a partly submerged mass of garbage and filth, mostly plastic. A small fleet of these wonderful Sea-Vax boats could, in under ten years, suck up and remove all this pollution from the Pacific. Would it not be so much better for nations to invest in this idea rather than to spend trillions of dollars on ever more military hardware and ammunition?

What an opportunity for some large organization or corporate company to put their name behind this much-needed clean up!

David Quarrie, Lynden Way, Holgate, York

EU slow to act over shooting of birds

Tim Murgatroyd’s column in The Press on June 6 asks the question ‘Is nature safe in our hands?’. His final paragraph states ‘If the Brexit process is handled badly it could threaten many of our EU-inspired environmental safeguards’.

Are these the safeguards that are supposedly in place to protect wild birds, birds that are shot and trapped whilst on migration to and from Europe, in countries for instance such as Malta and Cyprus where the EU has done nothing to enforce this legislation? This is just another example of why we should leave this morally bankrupt organisation.

Trevor Scott,

Boroughbridge Road, York

Thanks to all who helped after my fall

I just want to say many thanks to all the kind people who stopped by to help after my fall in Piccadilly on June 5: the couple who rang the ambulance service, the man who phoned my daughter, the bus driver, the many first aiders, the policeman and finally the ambulance crew. You were all fantastic.

My thanks.

Betti,

Sefton Avenue, York