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The people will suffer

JUSTIN Tomlinson slavishly follows his bosses when he writes about Assad and Syria in the Advertiser, “… we [sic] have a moral imperative to stop him killing his own people.”

Theresa May last year spoke about this moral duty to bomb people in Syria as she stood (literally) in Saudi Arabia. At the time May was supplying billions of dollars of weaponry so the Saudis could continue their bombing of Yemeni civilians, schools and hospitals.

The UK government weeps crocodile tears over Syria while blocking a UN inquiry into war crimes and civilian deaths in Yemen. Or when Egyptian dictator Al-Sisi who has imprisoned 60,000 political prisoners, and is torturing them to death, who slaughtered 1,000 demonstrators at Rabaa, (many burned alive), the foreign secretary “expressed regret” while the UK continued supplying Al-Sisi with weaponry.

Britain’s rulers, as ever slavishly following the US, won’t even allow the bodies to be cleared away before preparing to slaughter more. In 2017 civilian deaths from US led coalition forces rose to 13000 in Syria and Iraq.

Tomlinson euphemistically talks about learning from past mistakes. He is referring to past lies not mistakes. It is not that we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and therefore Assad and Russia can’t therefore be responsible for atrocities. 

Those previous lies are one more demonstration, if that were needed, that the last thing our rulers have in mind when banging war drums is humanitarianism. The first people who will suffer from yet more bombing will be those our rulers pretend they are protecting, and from a knot as tangled as this one has become, who knows where the suffering will stop?

Peter Smith, Woodside Avenue, Swindon

Faults are current

Despite many letters appearing in the paper about historic failings of previous councils, it is the current council that needs scrutiny. Our current council has hardly covered itself in glory. In just about every area our council has failed us immensely. Services have been slashed left, right and centre.

The cuts to recycling services and the reduced hours of the recycling centre have seen the town strewn with rubbish and, as featured frequently in your newspaper, fly tipping. The cuts to children’s services have been a total disaster, equally so the cuts to mental health services.

Our council likes to spend money on elaborate roundabouts yet ignores the debacle of traffic around the Outlet Village. Coun Mary Martin commented that “we are encouraging local residents to use buses rather than their cars”. This comment proves how behind the times our council are. The use of cars is on the increase and rather than confront this head on proactively, we are subject to a view more akin to the Triassic period.

Should you need any more proof of how bad the current council is then just take a visit to the abomination that is the town centre. This dystopian area is a direct result of a council that is behind the times, inactive and regressive in its thoughts and actions.

Miss K Collins, Lyndhurst Crescent, Swindon