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

Give Kent a break from housebuilding

The government’s drive to build more houses seems remorseless.

Whilst I know this is inevitable given the UK’s ever-blossoming population, their latest plan seems to be to increase again the proposed new housing in the south whilst decreasing it in London.

Is this a punishment for the south having a few remaining but shrinking, vestiges of greenery?

However, both of these areas are already extremely densely populated and without the infrastructure to cope.

So maybe the government should plan now to build for jobs and houses in less dense areas of the country further north and give the south, the Garden of England, a break.

Malcolm Hayes

Turn anger on political class

Now that the dust has settled a clearer picture of the recent riots is beginning to emerge. The knee-jerk reaction from Starmer, the politicians, mainstream media and some correspondents does not stack up.

There's very little, if anything at all, to connect these disturbances with the oft-quoted ‘far right’ - whoever they may be - no gun, smoking or otherwise. If there had been we'd have known all about it by now. In fact, such statements have backfired (pardon the pun) and Starmer & Co have been left with egg on their faces, lots of it.

They should think twice before lashing out and making similar sweeping denunciations in future.

It appears that the majority of those arrested had no political affiliations to any particular group - right, left, or centre - or any prior political protest involvement. More like spontaneous reactions fuelled by widespread and febrile online speculation. No conspiracy or master plan here, just unthinking reaction.

In fact, the political immaturity of the rioters was all too evident - moronic attacks on mosques and refuge centres, instead of venting their spleen on the real culprits - the political class responsible for the migrant problem.

Locking up folks for criminal damage and assault is one thing but sending them down the road for intemperate online outbursts made on the spur of the moment is quite another.

Releasing violent prisoners just to free up cell space to accommodate offenders is not only absurd, it will endanger public safety.

John Helm

Vulnerable suffer while unions are rewarded

May I convey early wishes for the very happiest of Christmases to the Prime Minister, his deputy and the Chancellor?

It must be very comforting to them and their parliamentary cronies, as they fill their bellies at taxpayer-subsidised watering holes at the Palace of Westminster, to know that they, at least, won’t be having to make a choice between heating and eating over the festive season.

Starmer’s government has the distinction of being the first government in recent history whose first move on coming to power was to penalise some of the most vulnerable in our society - supposedly because of a ‘black hole’ in the nation’s finances - while authorising inflation-busting pay rises to their union paymasters, whose members have been largely responsible for the almost non-stop succession of damaging strikes that have frequently paralysed the country over the last two or three years.

This year’s Parliamentary pantomime should be Cinderella, with Starmer as the Wicked Stepmother.

Bob Readman

Fuel payment cut could cost us more

An interview with a pensioner by the BBC this week highlighted, to use a favoured phrase by Labour, a "black hole" in the anomaly surrounding Pension Credit and the benefits achieved by those that receive this benefit.

This lady had worked all her life and ended up just over the limit where she may claim this assistance. In contrast her friend, who had never done a day’s work in her life, was on Pension Credit and when they worked it out was £2,800 a year better off.

Of course, to rub salt in the wound, she will get the winter fuel allowance.

Labour made great play on the word change prior to the election, let’s start with levelling up this unfairness.

Labour state that they are saving from cutting the fuel allowance. The consequences in doing so may cost more than money itself.

This ill-thought-out gain may lead to more long-term pain.

David Grummitt

Party politics have failed us

I deplore the political see-saw that has given us a regular alternation of Tory and Labour since 1945.

Political parties, as at present constituted, are a blight on Parliamentary government.

Members of Parliament should represent the interests of their constituents: they should not follow the dictates of the party bosses.

The system is broken. I have no idea how we can fix it but, unless we do fix it and restore a properly functioning parliamentary democracy, our country has no future.

Dennis Whiting

No thanks from doctors and drivers!

As proof of how bad a people we’ve become, not one doctor or train driver has publicly thanked the OAPs for forgoing their much-needed heating allowance in order to bolster the doctors’ and train drivers’ bloated salaries.

Our only consolation is the fact that they too will experience this, it soon comes around!

Tony Gaymer

Election just gave us a mean government

Stephen Tasker concluded his letter last week by asserting that Colin Bullen, Daily Mail readers and some sections of the Tory Pary (of which I am none) need to study the last general election result and undertake a reality check.

Frankly, for political blindness, or naivety, that assertion is incredible.

He seems to think that the result is a clear endorsement by voters for the Labour Party, when in truth just a mere 20% of the electorate voted for it. It is only by dint of our capricious voting system that Labour ended up with over 400 seats from such a small percentage of votes.

Compare that with the relatively newly-formed Reform Party, which from a standing start and no significant political machinery in place, achieved a 14% vote share, just 6% behind Labour, but secured only five seats. If that is not enough for him to see how little the results of our voting system reflect the way people actually voted, he should study the result for the LibDems who achieved a 12% vote share, 2% less than Reform, but secured over 70 seats!

Having read the statistical facts of the July election, hopefully he will realise that it is he who needs to take a political reality check, because what the election has delivered to this country is a mean-spirited Labour government with such a majority that after just a few weeks in power it is looking as if it intends to rule like a one party state!

C. Aichgy

Grim visions of our country

In last week’s letters pages, I was struck by the number of writers who appear to be living in a country that, thankfully, I neither recognise nor inhabit.

Ralph A. Tebbutt’s Britain sounds more like Kim Jong Un’s North Korea because, apparently its education system ‘is designed to force children into conformity’.

Colin Bullen’s Britain sounds like a Kafkaesque nightmare where ‘an army of bureaucrats’ and ‘back room pen-pushers’ have wasted the vast sums of money provided to health trusts.

Apparently, the leader of Ean Magee’s Britain ‘cares for no one over 60’ and ‘more people will die in their homes from the cold and illness from the effect of being cold’.

On the other hand, Ian Hardie-Storey’s country is led by someone called ‘Two-tier Starmer’ who has ‘more faces than a town hall clock’ because back in 2020, when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister and Starmer was leader of the Opposition, he ‘bent the knee in support’ of the Black Lives Matter protesters. Even though, at the time, Boris Johnson was in control, there was ‘no sign of the police or riot shields’.

David Topple’s Britain is led by a ‘Keir Stalin’, who is ‘an authoritarian zealot’ who intends to ‘restrict freedom of expression’.

I count myself lucky that I don’t live in any one of their versions of Britain. If I had the power, I’d offer to get them out and into the one in which I live, which doesn’t suffer from the aflictions of Indoctrinated children, parasitical bureaucrats, uncared for old people and a two-faced, authoritarian, Prime Minister.

John Cooper

Children need facts to form opinions

I am sure I am not the only person to note a certain inconsistency in Ralph A Tebbutt's letter on the importance of teaching critical thought at school.

He commences by excoriating the teaching of times tables and teaching by rote and waxes lyrical on the importance and beauty of mathematics. He then goes on to argue for a structure that allows all children to think for themselves and to learn from the world around them rather than being fed facts.

This will, he argues, lead to critical thinking on the part of children. But unless children have been fed the basic facts to start with, such as times tables, how can they then interpret and understand the world around them, let alone appreciate the beauty of mathematics? Without giving children unbiased "facts", not the latest interpretation of them, how can children have a solid foundation on which to build a questioning attitude?

Much of the problem with the country today is that children are prey to whatever latest educational fad is going and whatever the latest posts are on TikTok, Instagram, etc, and we have seen recently where that leads.

Critical thinking can only be developed where there is a sound grounding in knowledge and that surely is the role of primary and secondary education, to give children a secure footing on which they can question the world around them. Tertiary education is the place to instil the questioning attitude when students are old enough to start thinking for themselves.

Bob Britnell

Childish attitudes towards deafness

I was pleased to see the letter last week from Franki Oliver, audiology manager at RNID.

For 70 years I have been wearing "seeing aids" - aka glasses - and, in recent years, I have been wearing hearing aids too.

I wonder why sight deficiency is not regarded as something of which to be ashamed - or, worse, a suitable target for comedy or irritation.

Blindness is never a subject for mirth, but deafness often is.

It is not uncommon for deaf people to be regarded as stupid. We have all witnessed how people laugh when somebody gives the wrong answer to a question which they have not heard clearly.

We have all witnessed how impatient and exasperated people get when they have to repeat a question or a statement.

Why is this?

Why do people fuss about hearing aids being hidden and not noticed in the way that spectacles must be. Indeed, spectacles are regarded by some people as a style accessory.

Accepting that the origins of this weird discrimination between blindness and deafness will, forever, remain mysterious and obscure, is humanity, in this enlightened 21st century, still unable to grow out of such childish, primitive attitudes and shrug them off ?

Michael H. Peters

More building means animals will suffer

Your correspondent Vivien Clifford rightly draws attention to the bigger picture of the widespread destruction of wildlife and lack of respect for the creatures we share the planet with.

The failure to understand the ecosystem of which we humans are but one part lies behind so many acts of cruelty to animals, the building over of their habitats and behaviour.

Calling animals ‘vermin’ or ‘pests’ and validating their killing sets an appalling example to children who need to be part of the attempt to care for and protect our wildlife-depleted environment. Slaughtering adult, parent mammals means that infants are left to starve to death.

Proposals to cover so much of Kent countryside and farmland with new buildings mean that more and more animals, insects and birds are forced out and will join the increasing numbers of endangered species.

It’s surely not beyond the wit of humanity to find positive ways to co-exist with and conserve the rest of nature, appreciate the diverse beauty of other species and recognise we do not have a right or an entitlement to destroy them.

Frankie Green