Steve Halden got a letter printed in the Advertiser 22nd September
Title - Sweden got it right
After a damaging six month lockdown of the British economy Britain is back to square one again, with Covid19 on the rise and another lockdown on the horizon.
It has become clear to me that this virus cannot be eradicated. New Zealand got the nearest to defeating Covid19. They were free of it for three months, but the country was eventually reinfected by imported frozen food.
So if it cannot be eradicated then we have to learn to live with it. Pensioners will have to be permanently shielded from it. Young people will have to go back to work with masks and social distancing.
Sweden is leading the way with strict social controls while avoiding the need for imposing a lockdown on the economy.
Sweden has managed to get better results than Britain, France, Spain and Italy without resorting to a lockdown. If it cannot be eradicated then we will just have to follow the example of Sweden and find a way to live with it.
Steve Halden
Steve Halden got a letter printed in the Advertiser 8th September 2020
The Stock Market in the USA has risen far too high. Share prices in the USA have become detached from what is actually happening in the economy.
There is only one possible result and that is a correction in which the Stock Market falls. When this correction eventually happens it is bound to affect share prices in Britain.
What is not certain is when this will happen. The USA Federal Reserve have set interest rates too low so investors have no incentive to keep money in their bank accounts, so any spare money that people have is going into shares.
The same situation occurred a hundred years ago in the 1920s. The American Stock Market surged to crazy heights. People made fortunes by borrowing money and putting it into shares, but all those fortunes disappeared with the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Steve Halden
Steve Halden got a letter printed in the Advertiser 31st August 2020
Title - Encouraging signs
In every country across the world Covid19 is on the rise especially in the USA, Brazil and India.
Even in New Zealand where the virus was totally eliminated for three months, they mysteriously became reinfected and cant seem to stamp it out this time.
Although there has been a sharp rise in the number of cases of Covid19, the number of deaths from it seems to be reducing.
The statistics appear to show that Covid19 has become more infectious but less deadly.
If this turns out to be the case it is an encouraging sign that the world economy will be able to live with Covid19 and still survive and recover from it.
Steve Halden
Steve got a letter printed 17th August in the Advertiser.
Title Trust the Teachers
All school exams were cancelled this year so instead teachers had to submit estimates based on previous course work and mock exams.
Computer algorithms were then used by Ofqual to do an overall review of the grades once all the estimated results were received.
These algorithms were used in a way that created a whole lot of trouble for students. Estimates from schools based in rich areas were approved mostly unchanged, while schools from working class areas were routinely marked down.
Some students were marked down by three grades from A down to a D. This was all done without actually looking at the estimates but simply looking at the totals.
Students marked down to grade D will lose their chance of a university education. Personally I prefer to trust the teachers rather than computer programs. It may even be that the computer programs had some bugs in it and this created these inexplicable results.
Steve Halden
Steve Halden got a letter printed 4th August Swindon Advertiser
Title - Must do better in tacking the second wave
The death rate in Britain for Covid 19 has been one of the highest in the world but what is important now is how to stop the second wave from spreading across the country.
Most countries across Europe thought they had Covid 19 under control but almost everywhere the numbers are on the rise again.
The problem with lockdown is that it destroys the economy so it can only be used short term. Britain cannot afford another lockdown.
We must use what we have learned to deal with the virus from now on. In future we have to rely on social distancing, quarantine and wearing masks to keep us safe.
There is no point in digging into the past looking for mistakes. The important thing is the future. We now face the second wave. Britain must do better this time.
Steve Halden
Steve Halden got a letter printed 29th July Swindon Advertiser
CLOSE BORDERS TO COVID
15% of the people of the people who have caught Covid 19 in Britain have died.
This makes it far more dangerous than we have been led to believe.
It means that it is not a virus that we can live with like normal colds and flu because Covid 19 is a hundred times more dangerous than flu.
Britain must do all it can to stamp out this virus. Our borders need to be closed until this virus has been destroyed. Britain's borders need to be sealed indefinitely and this could be for many years.
Letter by Steve Halden printed in the Advertiser 9th July 2020
Black Lives Matter believe that the current shortage of houses and jobs is caused by racial discrimination.
But the housing shortage has a far deeper cause and is more closely linked to age discrimination.
The young generation in Britain face a shortage of 4 million houses, while the older wealthier baby boomer generation mostly own their own homes.
The current recession could cause the worst drop in GDP for 400 years with a corresponding huge loss of jobs in Britain.
Superficially this might appear to be a racial problem but the shortage of houses and jobs equally affects everyone in the younger generation.
This makes the problem much more difficult to solve because age discrimination affects almost everyone under the age of 45.
Steve Halden
Letter by Steve Halden printed in the Advertiser 27th June 2020
Homes for the young
Britain is short of 4 million houses at the present time. This is of particular concern to the young and families just starting out in life.
The young generation are the flower of the nation and the baby boomer generation should be helping them along as best they can, but in fact the opposite is the case.
The majority of baby boomers own their own houses, and a fifth own more than one house. The majority of people under 45 live in very expensive private rented accommodation and are paying rent to landlords.
Speaking as a baby boomer myself I can see we have let down the young generation. In my opinion this shift in wealth to the older generation started when Britain began selling off all the council houses at huge discounts.
Steve Halden
Letter by Steve Halden printed in the Advertiser 28th May 2020
Quarantine for two weeks is being considered for people entering Britain as a way to stop new infections of the corona virus getting into this country.
This seems a strange time to bring in such a restriction, now that the government has spent hundreds of billions of pounds financing the eight week lockdown of the economy.
The quarantine would have been much more effective had it been at the start of the pandemic.
If it had been done at the very start we could have kept the virus out of the country and avoided the vast expense of the eight week economic lockdown in Britain.
