Steeling ourselves to the economic shock | Letters

We in the UK do not make anything. We make neither ships nor cars; we no longer even make the steel that makes these things. We do not make white goods, or black goods. We do not make textiles. We cannot heat, fuel, clothe or even feed ourselves. The only thing we had to offer for these essentials were our financial services - supplied to a trading bloc on which we have now deliberately turned our backs and to a rest of the world that only dealt with us because we were a member of that trading bloc. How, then, do we as a nation survive?
Wal Callaby
Ipswich, Suffolk

" I know loads of people who voted leave, including in my own family, and I haven't heard a bigoted comment from a single one of them. From the remain side, however, there has been explicit ageist bile, contempt for the uneducated, talk of sewers bursting, fantasies about creating a new independent state that would exclude the backward "racist" north, and arguments for limiting old people's right to vote on the basis that they lack the IQ or social nous to make big decisions. If the leaders of remain want to see bigotry, they should look in the mirror.
John Davison
London