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We’re not bitter

Mr Gibbons in his letter (SA, February 10) claims that the electorate have spoken on the issue of Brexit and that I am embittered because my side lost.

His first claim may well be correct as the electorate did speak in December’s general election with 53 per cent voting for parties offering a further referendum on the subject of our EU membership!

My side did not lose as Mr Gibbons claims, but rather was cheated out of a further referendum by an unscrupulous Prime Minister taking advantage of the flaws in our electoral system. Whilst I am not embittered as Mr Gibbons claims, I most certainly am displeased at this abuse of our democratic system by our rotten Government and determined to see this defilement of our democracy is corrected.

Mr Gibbons claims December’s election was fair. Current evidence suggests otherwise as an independent fact-checking organisation found nearly 6,000 Tory party elections adverts were misleading or dishonest.

Mr Gibbons goes on to criticise me for using the word ‘racist’ three times in a short letter. This is hardly surprising given that we have a prime minister who believes it is acceptable to refer to piccaninnies with watermelon smiles and Muslim women as letterboxes, a previous prime minister who referred to EU citizens exercising their rights of free movement as ‘queue jumpers’ when more British people exercised those rights than any other EU nationality, and a leave campaign that falsely blamed EU immigrants for overwhelming our infrastructure, coming here to steal jobs and claim benefits, causing a drop in wages and, amongst other, things traffic congestion.

In fact, I am surprised I did not use the word more often given that 34 per cent of leave voters openly admitted racism played a part in their 2016 referendum vote. Indeed, the true figure for that will be much higher, possibly as high as 70 to 80 per cent once socially desirable responding is taken into account along with the fact that many leaver voters are either in denial about their racism or simply do not understand the concept of racism, something that is reinforced by recent research that has shown 55 per cent of leave voters admit that overhearing a conversation in a foreign language annoys them!

Mr Gibbons may prefer to bury his head in the sand over racism, but I do not. Furthermore, it is not acceptable to me that elements of the leave campaign, including the local representative of UKIP/The Brexit Party Ltd here in Swindon, continue to make false claims about EU immigrants and immigration even now.

As such I, and many others like me, will be ‘working together’ to remove our current rotten to the core government, and for our country to retake its rightful place at the heart of the EU!

Dr Adam Poole, Savill Crescent, Wroughton

Burglary a priority

I read with interest the article highlighting the woeful follow up rate of burglaries by Wiltshire police. I note this is because dwelling burglary is not a priority of the current police and crime commissioner and as a result the vast majority are not followed up.

As a candidate for PCC in ten weeks time I want to make clear that I will make dwelling burglary a police priority. I believe it is unacceptable for residents to suffer criminal invasion of their homes without an expectation of police follow up and a realistic attempt to catch the criminal responsible. If elected as PCC I am committed to ensuring that every single dwelling burglary is followed up. I have this policy costed and ready to go as a matter of urgency.

Jonathon Seed, Conservative Candidate for PCC for Wiltshire and Swindon