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

20mph claim is pure fiction

Sadly like many people calling out the so-called ‘war on motorists’, Terry Hudson and Hugh Bladon of the Alliance of British Drivers are railing against restrictions that are largely fictions of their own invention.

Let’s look at the ‘blanket 20mph speed limit in Wales’. It is no such thing: roads that are currently 30mph will be lowered to 20mph but this does not apply to any other roads – so if the limit is 40, 50, 60 or 70mph they will remain the same.

Not even all 30mph roads will be affected as local authorities have the power to keep roads at 30mph if they wish and some have done so already.

Unfortunately this sort of misinformation comes not from some cranky motorheads collective but from the leaders of the Conservative Party who, to their shame, prefer to rely on distorted narratives and grotesque fabrications in a desperate to garner su pport.

Steve Foulger

Transport debate enters realms of fantasy

I thought I had heard it all until I read that Mark Harper MP, the minister for transport, stating: "What is sinister and what we shouldn't tolerate is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops and that they ration who uses the roads and when, and they police it all with CCTV."

He seems to be referring to the 15-minute cities concept that has reached our shores from Europe and elsewhere.

Of course in some privately-owned shopping centres, CCTV and private enforcement is used to exclude individuals and no one seems to be worried about their activities at least not at the Department for Transport. Landowners in rural areas have long used enforcement to restrict the right to roam and sometimes contesting the use of public rights of way, so this is nothing new.

But councils stopping individuals from going about their lawful progress, that's a new one.

It is possible that the minister is conflating 15 minute cities with the proposed restrictions on car use in Oxford, where traffic congestion is a real problem, as it is here in much of Kent.

What it seems to boil down to, as it did in Canterbury, is the belief by some motorists that the freedom of the road is sacrosanct, even though that freedom is leading to congestion and possible gridlock in many urban areas. What they and the DfT and others such as KCC do not understand is that there are nearly 41 million road vehicles and that is not enough space for them all in our restricted urban areas, where the infrastructure is either medieval (Canterbury) or victorian (Isle of Thanet).

The minister even takes a tilt against the bus industry, that has long called for extensions in bus lanes to allow buses to maintain a regular schedule, so that a timetable is based on fact and not a work of fiction, as many are today. Can I remind everyone that a single bus can replace up to 70 cars.

I know we are in the run-up to a general election (groan) but do we have to enter the realms of fantasy?

Richard Styles

People without cars are ignored by government

Climate warming is a fact. But what do our leaders do and say?

Every move designed to change this situation, such as ULEZ and 20mph zones, is condemned as a mythical war on the motorist.

In the meantime, our pavements become car parks obstructing movements, especially for the disabled, and making crossing the road dangerous because people cannot see vehicles moving on the road.

Bus services have become unreliable or no longer exist.

The significance of cancelling HS2 is not only that the Midlands and North are treated differently to London and the Home Counties, but as a declaration by the government that they are locked into the old structures of a fossil fuel economy in which road transport and the private car take priority over the climate and ordinary people.

When will the government take the obvious step and cancel the proposed Lower Thames Crossing?

To say that the car is essential, when one in four people do not have access to a car, demonstrates very clearly how those people are ignored in all aspects of life.

The silent majority in this country is not those who shout for tax cuts and defend the competitive capitalist system. But the ones who seek an equitable society in which they can live in peace and fulfil their potential.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

Lessons to learn from high speed debacle

The worst thing to do to any construction project is to make changes once construction has got underway. It’s like removing the scaffolding from a house while it is still being built. No wonder things fall apart.

That’s what has happened to HS2, but it was a fundamentally flawed project from day one. It ticks all the wrong boxes and joins up all the wrong dots. It won’t serve Heathrow or link up with High Speed 1; it runs into three dead end stations in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester (or original plan was to); and it requires two different train sets to operate.

The only ‘levelling up’ that is likely to take place will be the premium fares that will have to be charged to pay back the billions it is costing to build. The precedent for that was set with HS1 (as anyone taking the train to St Pancras from here will know).

This was a political - not a transport - project, which accounts for why it was so ill thought out. This is what happens when politicians run things. And now we have a Prime Minister who won’t say whether one part of it should go ahead or not. This just creates further uncertainty, the worst possible thing in business.

The lesson to be learned from the HS2 debacle is that if you do anything – do it properly, or not at all.

John Helm

Blame scooter riders, not the machine

Why are we demonising e-scooters and not electric bikes?

E-bikes are equally as dangerous and some are also illegal, being over the 250 watt motors and not pedal assisted but e-powered, fully like mopeds.

The problem is the riders not the machine; e-scooters are as green as it comes but because they can be bought for under £300 many are purchased for children and teenagers as toys, thus causing the problem. E-Bikes and e-scooters must be regulated, registered and have some form of registration plate similar to Spain.

Phil Bulman

Stopping the boats was never likely

Rishi Sunak announced, to a fanfare of publicity, a promise to stop the boats crossing the channel from France.

Although the number of arrivals is down 10% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, the Home Office fears that crossings could exceed 80,000, by the end of the year.

Stopping the boats hasn't exactly been accomplished and clearly there was never a prospect he could fulfill his grand scheme.

In the meantime, the government is in a quandary as to the means they should take to curtail the costs of housing the 'visitors' in hotels.

A derelict prison, barges and military bases are all in line to accommodate them.

The French were paid a sizeable amount to boost police patrols on the beaches to stem the number of crossings.

We can gauge the success of this incentive by the volume of migrants still appearing in vast numbers on our shores.

The situation can only worsen and even if we acquire a new government in a year's time, I have little faith that Starmer and co will prevent economic migrants from crossing the brine in overloaded dinghies.

Michael Smith

Sad to see the state of my country

Not often I write nowadays but in my 82 years, I have never known our police forces sink to so low a level in the public estimation.

The days of Dixon of Dock Green are truly well gone. Sadiq Khan is threatening to break up the Met Police – it has been accused of racism, misogyny, what one female officer described as a boys’ club and officers in England and Wales are accused of turning off body cams to hide their more dubious behaviour.

Our police, who we once put our trust in, have lost public credibility

Despite technical and scientific advances, we are stepping socially backwards, our public services are now becoming a farce, there is a proposal to shut down most of England's railway booking offices so we are to be at the mercy of a moronic machine, many councils in the country are facing bankruptcy. It seems Britain can't afford Britain anymore.

Thankfully I don't have too many years in front of me. Hopefully the Grim Reaper will call before I see my country sink to third world status.

Brian Cooper

Enjoy the wonder of nature

Around this time of year, public footpaths and side streets tend to be carpeted with conkers, next month acorns take over. Cars run over them, making a nasty mess.

Most will just rot away as winter comes in with a vengeance.

Rather than just kicking them away and discarding them, try picking up a few and put them in your pocket. Placed in a disposable drinks container with a little bit of earth and a small drain hole at the bottom, and watered just once a week in the shed away from the frost, come the spring they will be about three inches high and ripe for planting back into a quiet corner of the woods, and in doing so, we'll be putting back into the world just a little bit of what we take out. If any school teachers are reading this, how about encouraging the whole class to participate, each marking their individual plants with a sticker?

We live in a beautiful world, perfectly balanced. One hundred miles further from the sun and we'd all freeze to death, 100 miles closer and we'd all perish. Virtually all the woes of this earth - polution - ozone holes et al are all man-made. Let's cosset this wonderful world. After all, it's all we've got.

Frederick E Woodworth

Dark agenda to curb free speech

The intentions of the political elite, whose illiberal mindset now dominates this country, are laid bare by the recent campaign to close down GB News.

The rag tag groups of activists supporting such blatant censorship by the establishment failed in their attempts to prevent advertisers using the channel, and are now going further in their efforts to silence any voices opposed to the agenda of the so-called liberal left. This has nothing to do with the storm in a teacup engendered by comments made by Laurence Fox but is evidence of a much darker agenda, seeking to suppress free speech and democracy itself.

While the press is not of one mind on the major issues facing this country the broadcast media is totally biased on the side of those propagandists who are undermining society in pursuit of the goals of the liberal left. The presence of GB News is of course an affront to those who wish to close down debate, and only admit one view to be heard.

Although often wrongly attributed to Voltaire the quote “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” sums up the philosophy underpinning free speech. If GB News were to be closed down it would be a massive triumph for those who are determined to destroy our democratic society in the name of agendas which are supported by only a small minority of vociferous activists.

Colin Bullen

‘Militants’ are right on many points

As usual Colin Bullen bemoans a list of so-called militants on subjects he cannot get his own head around.

On the environment, he sadly continues to deny anything's wrong, even as the wildfires, severe storms, flooding and ever-rising temperatures, etc, become ever more frequent with the world's September figures the highest on record. All that the campaigners have been trying to do is raise awareness of this, besides which the disruptions are minimal compared to the almost daily delays caused by roadworks, traffic jams and other such.

He typically ignores the fact that Brexit is clearly a failure and most people would now vote to rejoin, with many former Brexiteers, except the diehards like himself, having changed their minds.

Those who support asylum-seekers have a democratic right to protest and the Home Office's own figures state that 74 percent of arrivals in 2023 alone would be recognised as such. If we have too few jobs, homes, doctors, etc, look to the last 40 years of variable public service cuts, privatisation, deregulation, council house sell-offs with few replacements and the lack of safe routes or actions to tackle root causes of migration, rather than the migrants themselves.

Employing people to clear the backlog, as well as investing in green tech and new houses, etc, would help cut the asylum costs while providing tax-paying jobs for all, be they refugees or unemployed, to everyone's benefit.

Ray Duff