Are the elderly equipped for the digital age and is AI letting them down?

Hydropower isn’t the answer you think

Tony B (MetroTalk, Fri) asks why we can’t utilise the power of our rivers and streams to generate energy for our homes.

Early during the Industrial Revolution, Britain’s waterways were saturated 
with watermills and the like. However, small generators will not provide sufficient power. While hydropower can provide some of our power, it is neither financially nor environmentally appropriate for supplying all our needs
in the UK.

Hydropower from large dams brings unpleasant consequences, such as disruption of the flow of the river, the migration of its wildlife and displacement of communities.

Rotting vegetation and the deoxygenation of water also produce methane. Environmentalists, from the 1950s to 1980s, opposed hydropower on ecological grounds. C’est la vie. Elizabeth, Brentwood

Having accepted a long-term contract role just outside Edinburgh, the weekly commuting cost has gone up such that I’ve had to take the bus to and from work.

Meaning a longer commute time. And no option to work from home for me, sadly. The return of peak rail fares is a massive mistake in a series of ever-continuing errors by the Scottish government. Chris, Edinburgh

He may have outlasted Truss but…

Sir Keir Starmer’s time at 10 Downing Street has already outlived the life of an iceberg lettuce, which has become a milestone of sorts since the brief tenure of his doomed, penultimate predecessor Liz Truss.

However, if my understanding of the conclusions drawn by the esteemed political historian Sir Anthony Seldon in his recent book Truss At 10: How Not 
To Be Prime Minister are correct, Sir Keir has already echoed some of her undesirable traits.

Despite Liz Truss championing an inspirational economic growth plan, she didn’t listen to others and dogmatically stood by decisions that were demonstrably unwise at the time

Sir Keir’s vision of giving Britain ‘its future back’ is laudable but discontinuing a winter heating benefit affecting up to ten million senior citizens to help achieve that goal has resulted in a backlash including a non-binding vote from the Unite union for the decision to be reversed, as a humiliating finale to his maiden party conference last Wednesday.

And then on Saturday, the sensational resignation of Canterbury Labour MP Rosie Duffield, accusing Sir Keir of sticking rigidly to unpopular policies and of ‘heavy-handed management tactics’, is an inauspicious start considering 
Sir Keir’s government is yet to outlast the achievable lifespan of a potato, cabbage, carrot or that of numerous other vegetables. Robert Hughes, London

A landlord’s reaction to the Renters’ Rights Bill

I am a senior, small landlord who lives on incomes from my three
rented flats.

The new Renters’ Rights Bill proposed by Labour shocked me.

Tenants can, at any time, give two months’ notice to end the lease but landlords have to give four, plus statutory grounds for doing so?

Is it going to kill or help the private rented sector?