LIKE educationalist Jonathan Godfrey, I am not a Conservative; and also like Jonathan Godfrey I congratulated Jesse Norman on retaining the Hereford and South Herefordshire parliamentary seat (Hereford Times, July 11, 18, and 25 opinion and talking point pages).

As I said in one-to-one conversation with Jesse before the July 1 electoral hustings at St John’s Methodist Church that was chaired by the Bishop of Hereford, I believe in building communication bridges.

Jonathan writes in his July 25 ‘talking point’ piece: “During my career I met many politicians, including a number of secretaries of state, junior ministers, a sitting prime minister and a future prime minister. None has ever, or so it seemed to me, been in politics for self-enrichment or aggrandisement. We may have differed on the means but the overwhelming majority were striving to improve the lot of their constituents or of the country more widely.”

Compare that statement with an extract from p1 of the Reform UK 2024 manifesto, ‘Our Contract with You’: “We are ruled by an out-of-touch political class who have turned their backs on our country. But there is an alternative. The British people now have a common sense choice in Reform UK.”

Both the reference to “an out-of-touch political class” and the numerous references in that document to ‘British culture and values’, immigration, etc exemplify the communication barrier of ‘othering’.

The US-based Cambridge Dictionary refers to ‘othering’ as “The act of treating someone as though they are not part of a group and are different in some way:

“A large volume of literature has been written on stereotyping and othering…

“[Eg]: The country has a long history of the othering of foreigners.”

Perhaps, by accident or design, the ‘scrap net zero’ outlook of Nigel Farage and his Reform UK company that wants to free up UK fossil fuel licensing Perhaps, by accident or design, the ‘scrap net zero’ outlook of Nigel Farage and his Reform UK company that wants to free up UK fossil fuel licensing are the ones who are really ‘out of touch’?

A  British friend I became acquainted with in Herefordshire enlightened me to the fact that whilst climate change is a propellant for Herefordshire’s potholes, in the Philippines it results in landslides and much more, necessitating international aid expenditure. He knows that through Filipino in-laws.

That is not just what some would call a ‘family bias’. The World Bank estimates that without action, damages from climate change in the Philippines could reach 13.6 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, and Amnesty International reported in 2021 that the Philippines is the country most at risk from the climate crisis according to a report published in 2019 by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Bangladesh is third most at risk.

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This year, Herefordshire has experienced severe flash flooding, yet Wikipedia reports that the Philippines experiences “sea level rise, extreme rainfall, resource shortages, and environmental degradation. All of these impacts together have greatly affected the Philippines’ agriculture, water, infrastructure, human health, and coastal ecosystems and they are projected to continue having devastating damages to the economy and society of the Philippines.”

ALAN WHEATLEY

HEREFORD