BLM not party political

I read your article about the phone box in Urchfont with a mixture of anger and despair.

The young people in the village who wanted to use the phone box to educate and raise awareness on the issue about Black Lives Matter wanted to do something for the community.

The councillors and local people who opposed it because it was "too political" show their complete lack of understanding of the issue. BLM is a political issue because it relates to the values we hold - but it is not a party political issue.

It does not serve just one specific group of people - it is about us all having a greater understanding of the history of black people and an awareness of the prejudices (conscious and unconscious) that black people face every day of their lives. If I lived in Urchfont I would be grateful to have that opportunity to improve my understanding. So sad that young people wishing to do something positive for their community have it rejected by the insularity of local councillors.

Celia Stevens

Calne

A loss of trust in Govt

The massive issue with our government is trust. The trust in Boris Johnson and his uninspiring crew has been systematically undermined and its credibility repeatedly brought into question as they over-promised and under delivered across a whole range of issues.

Glib words like “world class” or “world beating” fall from Johnson’s lips only to be followed by chaos and failed performance. And people continue to die in increasing numbers.

Johnson’s weakness, unable to deal with opposition, means he selected a greatly impoverished cabinet lacking in experience and competence. Independently minded Tory MPs were excluded from Parliament. His attempts to muzzle opposition newspapers, even the BBC, shows his thin skin and weakness. Max Hastings, his former boss at the Daily Telegraph, wrote “He has long been considered a bully, prone to make cheap threats”.

Hastings also noted “There is room to debate whether he is a scoundrel or merely a rogue, but not much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth.”

Johnson’s main concern seems to be how he can survive on £3000 a week, from his prime minister’s salary. Failure to be open and transparent about huge government contracts on track and trace opens the door to increasing speculation about government corruption, of contracts being awarded to Leave cronies of Dominic Cummings

Now Johnson scraps food standards, opening the door to steroid stuffed beef and chlorinated chicken at the behest of US interest groups, deliberately attacking both the British people and British farmers.

None of this was in the Tory election manifesto. It is being done by stealth. “Johnson would not recognise truth, if confronted by it in an identity parade”, says his former boss, of his former Brussels correspondent.

According to some, trust in Angela Merkel, is why Germany has done much better with Covid 19, the German people trust her to tell them the truth. Very few people trust Johnson, particularly after he refused to sack Cummings for breaking lockdown.

Andrew Milroy

By email