Letters: August 12, 2016

Anonymity is granted only at the discretion of the editor, who also reserves the right to edit letters.

Abandon fracking

THE Government’s latest plans to offer payments or “bribes” to households to accept fracking on their doorsteps underlines the destructiveness of current energy policy.

It also demonstrates how desperate the Tories are to force fracking through come hell or high water.

These plans may appeal to the corporate interests of the fossil fuel industry but they ride roughshod over public opinion and our chances of securing a safe climate for current and future generations.

Any attempt to start a new fossil fuel industry in this country is completely inconsistent with commitments made at the Paris Climate Talks in November.

We have also seen from the US that fracking results in the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. These plans could prove divisive, setting household against household and causing tension in communities.

This misguided policy demonstrates again that the Government has no strategic energy policy and is a worrying indication of the failure of commitment to tackle climate change, demonstrated by Teresa May in her abolition of the Department For Energy And Climate Change.

Surveys suggest only 19 per cent of people in the UK support fracking, compared to 81 per cent who support investment in renewables.

I would urge readers to write to their local MP and ask them to call on Theresa May to abandon plans to frack our countryside.

MOLLY SCOTT CATO MEP

Member of the European Parliament for the South West & Gibraltar

....

Comment was piffle

COUN Mary Martin has made what must surely be one of the most inane comments I have read by a leading politician for some time.

With regard to the council’s decision to progress with the unwanted parishing programme she said: “Maintaining the status quo is not an option, 12 months down the line. If half of the borough was having the grass cut and litter picked up and the other half was just looking like a jungle then very quickly people would realise that.”

What exactly would they realise?

Even allowing for the sheer nonsense value of her comment, she of all people must be aware that those residents living in the non-parished areas of the town pay an additional amount of council tax aptly called “Swindon Non-Parish Area” which for a band E property was £33.99 in 2015/16. Currently, council tax covers the duties associated with visible services, a part of the universal service provision for which residents pay.

What Coun Martin is proposing (without blushing with embarrassment) is that residents pay twice for services.

Coun Martin should be pushing her colleagues to hold a referendum on raising council tax by a sum necessary to meet the cost of providing essential and visible services.

Instead she is part of a regime which has gratefully taken the opportunity to add two per cent to all bills for adult social care and increase council tax by 1.99 per cent, the maximum possible without a referendum.

My home address forms part of the new, larger parish of Haydon Wick which has taken on some of the services previously provided by Swindon Borough Council.

It would be a fool who claimed that local parish councillors have greater expertise in organising grass and shrub cutting, but it does seem that they are able to manage the job better than the SCS management.

The historical position of 50 per cent of the borough being parished is not peculiar at all, rather it occurred due in the main to the fairly recent local government reorganisation which resulted in the creation of Thamesdown.

Finally, Coun Martin is being disingenuous when she suggests there is no opposition to parishing, just a wish for people to have their views heard on the boundaries – what piffle.

DES MORGAN

Caraway Drive, Swindon

....

Getting the needle

I FOUND a discarded hypodermic syringe on that new route from Peglars Way to the town centre, known as the Southern Flyer, frequented by young families.

It was an accident waiting to happen. Not having my phone with me I was left with two options: Kick it into the long grass, which wouldn’t have been sensible, or pick it up and take it to a chemist.

I chose the latter. However, I met two council workers who had the equipment to dispose of such nasties.

I was a little miffed as they grumbled that I shouldn’t have picked it up.

I spotted this dangerous needle, I took responsibility for it at my own risk, an accident averted so where’s the problem?

I’m not recommending the picking up of discarded needles by the public but sometimes you have to use logic.

I assume picking up litter and being employed by the council, you would have sufficient insurance cover if you were unfortunate enough to prick yourself on a discarded needle and have the misfortune of becoming ill.

Living in a parish and not being a council employee, how would a voluntary litter-picker fare if he/she experienced the same fate?

Needless to say, not very well.

WILLIAM ABRAHAM

Rodbourne, Swindon

....

Don’t attack elderly

IT SEEMS that councillors are determined to have their rise in wages.

Not only have they reduced the funding for bus services and closed 11 libraries now they are attacking the disabled and elderly by targeting Dial a Ride.

How can those people sleep at night? They do because they do not care. They’re supposed to do things for the benefit of people in Swindon, not worry if they’re going to get more money for very little done.

I have not seen any real improvement in Swindon in the last few years of any significance. Disabled friendly it is not.

LORRAINE P

Pinehurst, Swindon

....

No concept of real life

THE national newspapers have revealed that we are all in it together. Catch-Phrase-Cameron has appointed 189 peers to the Lords since 2010.

All can receive £300 a day, tax free, as a daily attendance allowance, and I thought Swindon councillors weren’t doing too badly regarding that criteria.

That is for life in the Lords, no matter what their age.

None of them are facing the ballot box.

Each one costs the British tax payers an average of £27,768 a year.

In real life, pension ages are being increased, hospitals are refusing cataract operations on old people going blind and local services, from libraries to handicapped children’s centres are being axed.

Food banks are spreading like wedding confetti on a windy day and people are slaving on zero-hours contracts.

It’s like the film, On The Waterfront, you turned up to see if your face fitted for a day’s work, if you were lucky.

On top of that, Cameron awards the one who tried to terrorise us all into fear of leaving the Disunion by verbal threats of financial disaster and emergency budgets which have proven so far to be utter nonsense.

He has given Gideon one of the highest honours in the land – the Companion of Honour. Dishonour would be more fitting in my opinion.

That is not to mention the £12bn of our money he was giving away around the world to please his Notting Hill dinner table, chattering class, liberal elite guests.

They have as much chance of ever having to walk into a Job Centre looking for employment as I have of buying a season ticket for Celtic Football Club as a life-long Rangers supporter.

These people have as much conception of real life and hard working individuals toiling to pay the bills as my Westie has of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

They are silver spooned from cradle to grave while the vast majority of people battle every day to avert financial disaster.

It is time the Houses of Parliament was purged of these career politicians.

They can be summed up in a Roman senator’s remark: “I am for the people, but I am not of the people.”

Then they can be replaced by members from the real world that the vast majority us inhabit.

BILL WILLIAMS

Merlin Way

Covingham

Swindon

....

Stolen UKIP ideas

ONE of the biggest accusations against having UKIP in government has always been that the party has no policies beyond getting out of leaving the EU.

This is a total fabrication, of course, and there is one point which should be made clear. UKIP finds it difficult to promote its policies because the Conservatives keep stealing them, and trying to pass them off as their own.

For years now they have consistently refused to allow a grammar school education to many youngsters.

Their latest idea is to enable a return to grammar schools, now being touted by the new PM’s administration.

I should say this idea was first proposed by UKIP more than a decade ago.

In truth it is not UKIP which is struggling to find a practical manifesto, it is the so called main parties which have been bereft of sensible ideas.

Full election manifestos are available on the national website at www.ukip.org.

TONY MOLLAND

Former chairman

Devizes UKIP Association