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Do you agree with our readers? Have your say on these MetroTalk topics and more in the comments.
Who's really to blame when the rubbish piles up?
Why is it that whenever there’s a strike in essential services, such as the rubbish collectors in Birmingham, people always line up to blame the striking workers?
Perhaps it’s easier to bully and vilify the little people, who are just trying to win a decent wage for a hard day’s work.
Fingers have also been pointed at the council but they’re trying to work with impossibly meagre resources.
The greatest responsibility for this mess lies with the successive national governments who have cut local authority budgets to the bone, forcing councils to overtax their residents and underpay their workforce. Rob Slater, Norfolk
Is the Katy Perry space hate just jealousy?
Why so much hatred on Katy Perry et al for their ten-minute trip into Space on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket (MetroTalk, Thu)?
If what they’ve done is really bad for the environment, why not hate Elon Musk, since he’s been blasting rockets into space for a long time? Everyone’s like, ‘Wow, what an amazing achievement for SpaceX’ but this time, because Bezos filled his rocket with rich and famous women, everyone’s like, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’
Yes, Metro, as your headline asked, it’s just a matter of jealousy –especially from those who can’t afford it. Ersire, London
Sorry John, it’s not just women criticising women
John (MetroTalk, Thu) says all the negative comments about the Blue Origin rocket trip are ‘indicative of spite and jealousy, which is particularly prevalent in women – ie women hating the attention other women are getting’.
Leaving aside the appalling misogyny he expresses, John might be interested to learn that of the 13 letters printed, 11 were negative and nine were written by men.
Doesn’t this rather leave your theory in tatters, John? Veronyca, Warwick
Space trips while the planet burns? No thanks
As a small country, we are trying very hard to reach net zero. However, when we see this sort of pointless rocket trip happening ‘just because they can’, it makes us wonder why we don’t take our time to find better solutions that all the world – even the super-rich – can commit to. Jo, Kent
Biomass isn’t the clean energy fix you think it is
Mark Johnson (MetroTalk, Wed) asks whether we should be considering biomass, rather than coal, as an energy source.
Biomass is the most destructive, resource-hungry and dirtiest way of producing energy.
Yet this government (as its predecessor did) is giving public money to the Drax biomass power station in North Yorkshire for the foreseeable.
The total subsidies since 2012 are £7billion. About £2billion more has been agreed for the next five years.
Not only is Drax the UK’s single largest carbon emitter, according to climate scientists and green groups, but it is the world’s biggest tree-burner.
Felling and burning trees emits even more carbon and other pollutants than coal and coke.
Helen Shaw (also MetroTalk, Wed) explains perfectly why the only way forward for world economies is circularity – or why you cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. Lou Stothard, Wirral
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