Where did it all go wrong?

Watford and Brentford are in the Premier Division, Reading and Bristol City are in the Championship and Swindon drop down to Division Two. When and why did it go so wrong for Town while our other ex local derby teams have prospered?

So sad , but we’ve still got Bristol Rovers!

Roger Foord

Chorleywood

Herts

Israel and terror

Steve Jack (SA, May 28) has everything back to front. When it comes to repeating lies often enough for people to believe them Israel and its apologists have the rest of the world beaten hands down, although there is some sign of things beginning to unravel for them after the latest atrocities.

It is the murderous behaviour of the right-wing extremist Israeli government that has inspired attacks on innocent Jews in this country and elsewhere, not the protests of those supporting Palestinian lives and basic human rights.

Israel is indeed a terrorist state, founded by terrorists (the Stern Gang, Irgun Zvai Leumi etc) who perpetrated massacres of men women and children to terrorise the long-standing inhabitants of Palestine to flee their homes, and it has been maintained and expanded by terror to this day.

Hamas did not instigate the latest round of bloodshed. In fact events followed a long-established pattern: Israel ramps up provocations (evictions of Palestinians from land and homes where they have lived for generations, aka ethnic cleansing, attacks on mosques and so on) until they finally elicit some desperate though futile response from some Palestinians and then uses that to justify a further escalation of killing and destruction.

It may be easy for the uninformed to believe that Palestinians have been brainwashed into a “misguided understanding that the Zionists are evil monsters” when these misinformed people are ignorant of or turn a blind eye to the actual Palestinian experience of Zionism: decades of killing, brutalisation, being driven from their homes and land, daily harassment by army police and armed settler gangs, ruthless economic blockade…,the list goes on.

Maybe even Steve Jack would want to resist and strike back if he and his family and friends and neighbours had to live with that, day in, day out, year in year out.

Martin Topping

Lyddon Way,

Greenmeadow

Praise for volunteers

It’s Volunteers’ Week! The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on national healthcare charity, Sue Ryder, has been immense. Not only did it have a financial impact on the charity but it also meant that our incredible volunteers were unable to support us because of the national lockdowns.

We are extremely excited that we have been able to welcome our retail volunteers back since the roadmap allowed non-essential shops to reopen. Sue Ryder has over 5,500 dedicated retail volunteers and since our shops reopened they have given over 200,000 hours to us. Our hospices are only part funded by the Government, with just 30 per cent of their costs covered on average, so our team of retail volunteers, play a critical part in helping the charity raise the rest.

You can see why our volunteers are an invaluable part of the Sue Ryder organisation; they enable us to continue providing the expert and compassionate palliative, neurological and bereavement support that we are so well known for.

Sue Ryder is committed to making volunteering with us a rewarding, inclusive and empowering experience for everybody. We’d like to appeal to any of your readers who would like to find out more about joining our team. However much time you have, we’d love you to hear from you! To make a difference as a Sue Ryder volunteer, please visit: www.sueryder.org/Volunteer for more information.

Stuart Mitchell, Volunteer and Community Manager for Retail at Sue Ryder