Our move to The New World, as told by readers

I look forward to The New Planet in 2035 if I’m still here (74)… I hope Trump and Putin won’t be!
Mervyn Davies

Perhaps you should insert “brave” into your new title. I feel we might be heading into that dystopian future sooner than we think!
Celia Tuck
Cottenham, Cambridge

Congratulations on the new paper and what an inspired choice, no doubt unintentional, to name it after the leading Soviet and post-Soviet liberal journal, Novy Mir!

Good luck with your campaign against Reform and populism in the UK. I feel, unfortunately, that Reform is here to stay for as long as its main selling point is engendering fear about unlimited irregular immigration.
Peter Fell 

Congratulations. I believe it is the right decision to broaden yours and our horizons. What happens in the US, Russia and beyond does affect the UK and Europe. The rise of populism and interference in elections are causes for concern, and quite rightly we want to give our children and grandchildren a more prosperous and secure future.

The journalism is superb every week and hopefully the new title will bring in new readers, even those who voted for Brexit.
Lesley Gibson

I’m looking forward to this development and wish TNW every success. I’ve been a subscriber for many years and rarely close the paper without having learned something new.
John Lange

Reading you from France, I’ll be staying with you and even applauding. Consistently high-quality journalism (with a special shout-out for Marie Le Conte and Jonty Bloom) and general good sense. Thanks to all concerned. I look forward to your expansion into The New World.
Thomas Landon

The New European was distinctive in offering a European perspective. European current affairs are woefully inadequately reported elsewhere in the British press. I hope this name change doesn’t mean that the paper will pivot away from its European focus.
Jane McBennett

I liked the TNE branding. It was a positive statement. The new title will grow on me, I’m sure. What matters is the journalism. If it truly does join the dots so that people better understand what is going on, this will be a smart move.
Nick Maiden

“Europe” and “European” are dirty words to most of the British press, and changing the title feels like handing them a win. The presence of TNE among other papers in newsagents and supermarkets served as an antidote to their endless irrational Europe-bashing.
Graham Guest

The new world we’re in is a world of madness, ruled by a fickle and unstable individual on one side and ruthless, driven and bloodthirsty counterpart on the other, both sharing utter contempt for Europe, European values, and European standards, and both grasping what is not theirs. 

It’s Europe that needs to be galvanised, it’s Europe that needs to unite and Europe that needs to be defended – intellectually and militarily – from this new world pincer movement.
Christopher Skillen

While I welcome the broader focus of your excellent magazine, a major personal consequence will be the end of my own act of personal resistance against Brexit here in leafy Oxfordshire as I will now no longer be able to religiously place copies of The New European in front of the Daily Mail every morning.

If I could take the liberty of brutally mutilating one of Joni Mitchell’s classic lyrics, “for something gained, something’s lost”. 
Michael Hearty FCPFA Oxfordshire

“Your next car will be Chinese” (TNW #438) was a great read for the first edition of The New World. I had some of the pieces of the jigsaw, but this enabled me to see a much broader picture. Thank you.
Norma Spark

Why are so many left wing readers of The New World so pessimistic and hating Labour? I don’t vote for them, but the party is tackling a monumental crisis on various fronts. The winter fuel allowance was a terrible own goal, but give them a chance and have some belief, for once.

Mark Grahame’s assertion (TNW #438) that Reform will romp to victory in 2029 is ridiculous. Farage did well in a by-election and local elections held in a limited number of places on a very low turnout.

I’m reminded of the Greens getting 18% of the Euro vote in the late 1980s and lots of people thought they would go on to “romp to victory”. They didn’t. And Reform won’t either. It is not complacent for me to say “calm down, everyone!”
Andrew Napier

Re: Rats in a Sack on the Daily Mail’s fears for Kemi Badenoch (TNW #438)

Until the Conservatives admit they can’t out-Farage Farage, they are doomed. They were once the party of Europe; if they wish to survive, they need to be so again. Can an entrepreneur who exports to Europe and may need migrant labour support now donate to the Tories?
Christopher Harrison

Re: Alastair Campbell on Labour’s unachievable housing target (TNE #437).

Alastair has been in politics long enough to know what happens if an administration sets an achievable target: once they’ve hit the target, the implementers think “job done” and stop trying, so you never get any more than the target.

I ran a project to put new bicycle parking spaces into central Cambridge. Officers said, “we need a target for this project, how about 500 spaces, we think that’s achievable?” No, I said, make the target a thousand… which everybody said was unachievable. But that was their political direction, so they did their best.

And what did we deliver? Six hundred. A hundred more than if we’d gone with the proposed “achievable” target. Did we meet the documented target of a thousand? No. Was the project a success? Yes.

Labour may or may not have a private target for what they think is actually achievable. But failure to deliver the entire 1.5m won’t mean that the policy shouldn’t have been attempted.
Tim Ward

In his diary (TNE #437), Alastair Campbell describes Tirana airport as the fastest-growing in Europe; how times change. When I first visited Albania via Tirana airport in 1992 from Rome there were no other aircraft on site and aviation fuel was non-existent. In fact our return flight to Rome was via Bari airport so the aircraft could refuel to make it to Rome. 

Aubrey A Jones (retired British police officer covering Italy and Albania) Halesworth, Suffolk

BELOW THE LINE

Re: “Reigning cats and dogs in America” (TNW #438).

If they make a dog the next presidential candidate, it might well win. At least it would be house-trained and therefore a definite improvement on the current president.
KEITH HOBBS

Re: Patience Wheatcroft’s “Time to go back to the office” (TNW #438).

My wife and I worked from home, starting from the lockdown (I have since retired). Our two daughters and a son-in-law also work from home 80% of the time.

WFH gave us more time – we weren’t travelling up to four hours each daily. We saved on petrol and rail fares, and had less stress because of unreliable public transport and gridlocked roads. WFH is also better for the environment.

Neither of us missed the office. I understand that it would drive some people nuts, and that younger people probably need some interaction in the workplace. But if the government seriously wants people to work longer they must enable flexibility for people to manage their lives in the way that works best for them. Employers who insist on presence when it isn’t necessary for the job will lose out on good candidates by being inflexible.
IAN BARLTROP