Our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent and beyond.

Some letters refer to past correspondence which can be found by clicking here. Join the debate by emailing letters@thekmgroup.co.uk

Buying land to avoid tax is indefensible

One of the features of our economic system is the way large enterprises use the plight of small enterprises to defend their own interests.

The whole history of farming and land has been a process whereby land has been taken away from the general population to become the private domain of rich individuals. A process clearly seen in the enclosure of land and the Scottish clearances.

The latest proposals regarding inheritance tax are in part designed to stop rich individuals buying land in order to avoid inheritance tax. This practice is recognised by all those in a position to know.

But rather than defend this defenceless practice, they cry crocodile tears, claiming to defend small farmers.

They know that the plight of small farms is not due to such measures but to the fact that the large enterprises, supermarkets making large profits, have a stranglehold over the small units and can dictate the prices they pay for the goods they want.

Sadly, it is possible that some small farms may suffer under these proposals.

What needs to be addressed is the whole economic system which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

Starmer can’t see dangers of farm tax

The attack by the government on the farming community is very likely to lead to food shortages, as those affected have no recourse but to take industrial action.

This is a result of a majority of the political class being drawn from ivory tower universities and possessing no understanding of the real world outside academia and of experiences limited to arcane debates with like-minded individuals.

We desperately need a government of those who comprehend the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to idealistic visions of them, which have been taught by an education system biased in favour of theory, not practice.

Those with careers in, for example, engineering, farming, and the sharp end of the medical profession are far better suited to make vital decisions about what is required, than the elite graduates of Oxbridge with degrees in philosophy or political science.

In order that the Treasury may raise what is a relatively small amount compared to the overall budget, we will be facing the return of some form of food rationing, yet neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor seem capable of seeing where their policy is leading.

Colin Bullen

Only the richest will pay

So, farmers are warning of food shortages as they protest in Westminster.

Even after Labour's tax changes, tax on a £3 million house inherited from your parents would be £800,000 whereas tax on a £3 million farm inherited from your parents would be nothing!

Hence, only the richest 4% of people pay inheritance tax and only the richest 1.5% of farmers will pay half inheritance tax over 10 years.

Which simply underlines how the London protest was a protest funded by obscenely wealthy people who don't want to pay any tax at all.

Geoffrey Brooking

Vain posturing on climate action

Since civilizations decided laws and other central diktats were of benefit to control their population in civilized ways, penalties were a useful means to bring the transgressors to heal.

A visit many years ago to a processing production plant in France was an object lesson. Challenging the manager of the plant about the absence of any guarding of equipment to protect his employees his response was ‘everyone knows it’s dangerous, when the insurance cost of accidents is greater than the cost of installing machine guards, we install the guards.’

The climate change lobby may well be right in their fears but until the cost of ‘putting the guards on’ is less than the vast ‘show us the money’ credible cost of doing nothing the biggest polluters- India, China, USA and developing nations, will continue to pollute.

The UK’s actions are posturing at best if we believe that our minuscule contribution to reducing carbon emissions will do anything but bankrupt UK Ltd, except give a few politicians the line to their biographies ‘I tried’ or ‘it wasn’t me, it was them over there’

Climate change is now a business and governments don’t do business well.

I fear we have learned little from the occasions when nations joined to mobilise in crisis of two world wars. We now live in the immediate, want it now, careers as influences, everyone’s opinion matters.

Whether we can grow bananas in our gardens in 2050 and Bangladesh is flooded out of existence in 2100 won’t win the argument

Mel Lowthion

People are rejecting leftist nonsense

Keith Nevols and John Cooper, each decry the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the USA (letters last week).

The former says the UK should ‘stand up’ to him. Why, when he is a greater friend of this country than Biden is and Kamala Harris would ever have been? He goes on to suggest that to help in achieving that endeavour we should ‘rejoin’ the Single Market’ of the EU, but of course doesn’t mention the costs involved and the sacrifices the UK would have to make, to meet the demanding terms the EU would require to be met, for doing so.

John Cooper goes even further; painting an almost hysterical picture of Trump as, ‘notoriously unpredictable’, when what he really means is that he finds it impossible to simply accept that the American electorate has now chosen a person who will never buy into the leftist politically correct nonsense ideology, which has been pervading almost every aspect of Western culture for far too long. What is more, they have roundly rejected it in record numbers, giving Trump a clear mandate in the Oval office, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Finally, the letter from Ruth Marsh expounded the alleged virtues of being the world leader in pursuit of the mythical ‘net zero’. Why does the UK need to be the first, when far more polluting countries are not prepared to do the same?

I would prefer to be last, instead of witnessing our economy tanking and the population of this country poorer and colder, just because fanatics obsessed with ‘carbon capture’, solar panels, pylons scarring our landscapes and wind farms (rather than food security and animal welfare on real farms) are being gifted unbridled licence by this government to load a burden of billions onto taxpayers, for a totally unachievable purpose.

C. Aichgy

Minister is a principled man

David Lammy did say some of the unpalatable truisms about Donald Trump (letter ‘Swift U-turn by new ministers’). However, it’s disingenuous for Bob Readman to suggest that he sent a grovelling letter to the president elect.

The fact is that David Lammy met with Mr Trump and his campaign team in September, thus before the presidential election. In his exact words, David Lammy told journalists that Mr Trump “did not even vaguely” bring up his past critical comments, which David Lammy dismissed as “old news”. My humble apologies to Mr Readman if he attended that meeting.

David Lammy is not the only person to have used similar adjectives to describe Mr Trump, who has always advertised himself as the most honest, law-abiding, incorruptible and intelligent politician of his generation while evidence points to the contrary.

We must respect the verdict of the US electorate and, as hinted by David Lammy, work constructively with president Trump.

Mr Readman used sarcasm to infer that David Lammy is an unprincipled politician. But available empirical evidence suggests that compared to Donald Trump he is definitely “a man of principle”.

L. Roger Numas

How to get Kent’s buses moving again

Good news for bus services in Kent this week!

Firstly, the much-hyped Fasttrack bus service linking Whitfield and Dover is now operational and secondly the Department for Transport has subscribed £23m to deliver better bus services within Kent. After a year of cutbacks and delays, we may be moving forward at last.

I was a bit surprised that Stagecoach is using five-year-old diesel buses on the Dover Fastrack. The other Fastrack scheme in Thameside seems better managed than the Dover scheme. It already has its first Irizar, i.e. tram electric bus, whereas Dover is promised to see electric buses in the 'summer.'

We are yet again in a situation where Kent is receiving substantial public transport investment from the government, with more to follow. However, the outcome is often cuts in services, vanity projects, poor project management and expedient short term fixes.

This means useful interurban bus services are cut and wasteful, pointless, zombie bus services are run, to desperately shore up a disintegrating network. Potential bus users are not going to be tempted to forsake their cars, if all that is on offer is an unreliable, three-times-a-day bus service, operated by a bus which belongs in a museum.

If this enhanced partnership means anything, then what is required is a root and branch investigation of bus services and then action to improve services substantially from what is currently on offer.

Nobody really expects 'London style' bus services but certainly something better than the ramshackle bus network that is in place today.

Richard Styles

Shameful lack of compensation for servicemen

I was ashamed after watching this programme of the damage and suffering caused to our servicemen who attended Britain’s post-war atomic weapons programme in the Pacific.

These men, like myself, joined the armed forces to protect their country against aggression from other countries. What they did not sign up to, however, was their lives to be taken prematurely or to spend decades suffering from the effects of radiation and ‘fall out’. The servicemen’s children, because of their parentages, also suffered all manner of illnesses through no fault of their own and certainly deserve compensating as well as the men involved.

To put things into perspective, I flew out the Singapore in December 1961 to join a destroyer for an 18-month commission. For some unknown reason, our ship was told to come back to the UK via the South Pacific and America, calling in to Christmas Island for four days.

We were only told not to eat the fish but nothing about breathing the air, drinking the water, or swimming, which we all did. Some even had trips to the Test Site, with the consequence that it shortened some people’s lives by cancers and other ailments, and those of us who remain living with muscular and skeletal problems.

Court cases have been brought against the MOD to seek compensation - not just for the servicemen but for their families who have also suffered, have been denied justice because of the Official Secrets Act.

Each and every government has denied these people and their families compensation, but at the same time spent tens of thousands of pounds on barristers and lawyers.

A war pension is no substitute for the decades of suffering these people have endured, through no fault of their own

Sid Anning

Most festive ads leave me cold

There has been a glut of Christmas ads on TV representing an array of retail outlets from Aldi to Boots.

They didn't waste time in launching their festive offerings on consumers.

Very few of the ones I've viewed made an impression on me but I was taken by John Lewis's effort which told the story of a young girl’s bid to buy a last-minute present for her sister and was engagingly comprised of flashbacks of the relationship between the two siblings.

It was a well-crafted tale that thankfully didn't rely on animation.

And, furthermore, there was no evidence of tables laden with the usual Christmas fare. The advert fed our emotions rather than sharpened our appetites.

M Smith