Deal or no deal?

Most sensible people would agree that after all this time together in the European Union single market, London and Brussels should try to preserve as much preferential treatment as possible by entering into a high-quality free-trade agreement, and not revert to trade only on WTO terms if there is no deal. But how bad would no deal be?

“A race against time” (April 1st) gave the impression that reverting to trade on WTO terms would be damaging to Britain, citing tariffs on exports to the EU of 10% on cars, 15% on food and 36% on dairy products. But if this looks bad for Britain, it is much worse for the remaining EU members.

In January this year, Britain exported £1.5bn-worth ($1.9bn) of vehicles to other EU countries, but imported £3.6bn-worth of vehicles from these other members. When we add the pound’s more than 10% depreciation since the Brexit vote, the WTO-based tariff protection for cars is, in effect, eliminated on British exports but doubled on those from other EU members to Britain.

As for food and agriculture, in January, British exports of all categories of food and agricultural goods amounted to just 6.3% of all British exports to the EU. In that month alone, Britain had a trade deficit of £1.4bn in its agricultural trade with the EU.

Surely, if there are sensible people in Brussels, they will recognise that it is very much in their interests to join Theresa May in arguing for the negotiation of a high-quality free-trade deal concurrently with other Brexit negotiations.

ANDREW STOLER

Former deputy director-general of the World Trade Organisation

Adelaide, Australia





Taking on the neighsayers

The place of the horse in the economy and society did indeed vanish quickly (Free exchange, April 1st). But horses can’t vote. We can. The comparison of humans to horses being displaced by technology raises the question of just how democracies will cope with the disruption of jobs by automation. We have already seen the rise of virulent, sometimes revanchist politicians, promising to bring back jobs. What will happen when human labour is squeezed further?

There are solutions to an economy where full employment is either impossible or more unstable than it has been since the Industrial Revolution. These solutions, such as a universal basic income, or universal national service, or shifting tax to passive income rather than wages and salaries, will take substantial changes in government. How fortunate that we, unlike equine labourers, have the means to expand our freedoms and choose our response to the growing potential of machines.

EVAN PRESTON

Programme director

Fair Share Education Fund

Washington, DC

The number of robots may be increasing, but it is still humans who decide how many there will be, and the work they do. The limits of robot capabilities can be demonstrated by a simple test: just give one a shovel and ask it to muck out a stable, having first determined whether there is a horse in residence, what mood it is in and how to persuade Dobbin not to kick R2-D2’s digital derrière. MALCOLM HARKER

Seattle The scales of justice Fees for employment tribunals are not the only barrier to enforcing employment rights in Britain (“Justice in an age of austerity”, April 1st). In 2013 legal aid was withdrawn from many areas of law other than discrimination cases, including employment-law advice and representation. Fewer legal-advice centres are able to provide a service for their vulnerable clients, and many continue to face cuts in funding. The economic cost of unresolved legal problems however can be enormous. The government is promising a review of cuts to legal aid and a consultation paper next year on legal support. Action to improve access to justice is urgently needed.

MARTIN BARNES

Chief executive

LawWorks

London





Waste of papers

The notion that scientific journals are slowing progress is an opinion that is increasingly articulated by scientists themselves (“Time’s up”, March 25th). As an editor and reviewer of research articles, I see the problem differently. Many of us assume that the publication of research is to inform accurately, and in the instance of clinical research, to improve the health of people. But many clinical-research papers submitted for review are on the march to irrelevance. These articles are scientifically sound, well-designed, utilise the best biomedical advances and employ the most sophisticated statistical programmes. The problem is that too many of them are not relevant to the readership of the journals. If the claim is correct that most clinical research is false and most of it not useful, then the risk of trying to fix the wrong target is that it will foster the proliferation of more false and non-useful research, but do so more quickly.

ARTHUR AMMANN

San Rafael, California

How do you fund an international journal that is open access? I edit a journal, and there are costs that have to be covered for editing (most authors are not native English speakers), translation (authors can submit papers in French, Spanish or Portuguese) and the management of the submissions process. We also have to cover the costs of a policy that provides free subscriptions to institutions in poorer countries. If I have to fund this journal from payments made by authors, I would lose most of my most insightful (and influential) writers. DAVID SATTERTHWAITE

Editor

Environment and Urbanisation

London





Is they right?

I was delighted to read Johnson’s column on trying to find a gender-neutral pronoun (April 1st). As he said, the Oxford English Dictionary’s first use of a sex-neutral, indefinite “they” was about 1375. For some mysterious reason, school marms and style manuals decided that the epicene “they” was ungrammatical. As a result, people began saying truly ungrammatical sentences such as “Everybody likes pizza, doesn’t he or she” in an attempt to sound correct. They failed.

I wrote about this subject in an essay that appeared in American Speech in 1982.

GEORGE JOCHNOWITZ

Professor emeritus of linguistics

College of Staten Island, CUNY

New York

* As the American Copy Editors Society stoke this debate, I would propose “o” for the epicene pronoun to replace he and she. It has all the advantages of “they,” you discuss, and some more. It has the brevity of I and, as such, a poetic resonance with it. I can go with they, but I goes best with “o”. It saves ink and digital space—a likely astronomical gain over time. Finally, some 190 million people, all native Bengali speakers, will get to speak a word they already use. And, for full disclosure, since after moving to New York, I find myself using my mother tongue in stores and in taxis more frequently than I did since leaving Kolkata as a college student, it will be of some advantage to me.

KAUSHIK BASU

Professor of economics

Cornell Universiy

Ithaca, New York

A bumpy flight