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

Who speaks for those who need homes?

Sadly this left of centre "conservative" government has decided to demonise landlords, just like the Labour Party has done for years, imposing onerous restrictions on them, undermining their businesses and making it incredibly hard for them to regain possession of their properties should they want or need to.

This is a Gove-ian ploy to try and get more houses up for sale and thus increase home ownership; it rather ignores the fact that it does nothing to increase the overall stock of houses and results in someone currently housed becoming unhoused and in need of accommodation.

Perhaps we are again seeing the law of unintended consequences at work, but surely some official in the Civil Service could have pointed this out to the minister? Perhaps they did but, having worked in the public sector for 40 years, I am well aware that it is not normally somebody's job to look for unintended consequences, or at least not until it is too late.

If the government wants more home ownership it must allow more houses to be built, it's that simple, but pressure from NGOs and home-owning members of the public who value the natural world above people's desire for homes frustrates the ambition.

Which is more important, that people can go "wild swimming" in a clean river or that new homes are built?

Yes, pollution problems need tackling and that takes time, but we should accept that, we need more housing now, people need somewhere to live, surely people are more important? Of course, it’s not popular to say that because politicians live in fear and the opposition to housebuilding is well organised, whereas nobody is speaking up for those who need homes.

Bob Britnell

Put more trust in smaller councils

It is 50 years since district councils replaced the corporations and urban/rural districts.

Can we really say that there has been an improvement? Is Kent a better place for having rubber stamp planning committees and increasing urban sprawl surrounding our towns?

The county seems to lurch from crisis to crisis by issuing constant threats to close local waste sites, libraries and children’s centres. Meanwhile bus services disappear and on our roads there are potholes, worn-out road markings and a sense of decline.

There are 10,000 town and parish councils in England, ranging in size from Shrewsbury and Salisbury to small parishes representing 1,000 people or less. Some are good and some not so good, but they are all at the centre of their communities.

Some are a bit Dibleyite like the infamous online spat at Handforth Parish Council but for all that, what's wrong with having a talking shop to hear what people have to say?

Too often the centralising managerialist bureaucracies within most districts, counties and above all at Whitehall, people in local communities don't receive a hearing and as a result dreadful miscarriages of justice are perpetrated. Too much is done to communities on the basis of expediency, without bothering to explain and persuade why it is being done.

Whoever made the comment about 'Boomers' is grinding an axe, because older people do care about their community and its environment, and as a result the land speculation community had to justify their cookie cutter, bland designs and housing developments and they don't like it. Older people want to leave something better for those generations to come and I for one find it sad that we are doing the opposite.

Town and parish councillors are often of similar or superior calibre to those elected at district and county level, so there is nothing amateur about them.

Richard Styles

Vital services are being neglected

A youth service provider has been forced to close most of its 50 Kent youth clubs after KCC ended funding for commissioned youth services from April, in a move to save just under one million pounds.

The council said it had to adapt to hard, financial realities and services were to be provided through family hubs. The provider’s CEO said that he has been told KCC were going to provide alternative centre-based youth clubs and detached youth sessions but despite seeking information asking for months as to where those will be, no answers have been forthcoming

A large number of dedicated youth workers are being made redundant, while these closures represent a very great loss to the community, as such clubs have prevented the need for many young people to go into statutory services, and mental health services, meaning there is now no safety net for numerous youngsters.

KCC claims that moving to family hubs will help them better target services to young people where they are needed most, through a mix of on-site, online and community settings, yet those at the front line assert that they will only help very young children, not the teenagers in need.

The inevitable result will be a rise in anti-social behaviour, dealing with which almost certainly leads to greater expenditure than the amount saved.

In addition, KCC, as part of its responsibilities for road maintenance, has announced a programme to repair potholes but it does not cover most of the smaller urban roads and envisages patching rather than resurfacing, another short term, and ultimately pointless, endeavour.

The community charge on our property shows that approximately 60% goes to KCC, yet one wonders on what it is being spent.

We know part of the answer lies in the millions expended on dealing with the immigrants arriving on Kent shores. It is a scandal that Kent taxpayers, while watching vital services being neglected, should be expected to pay for those who choose to leave the safety of France and become a burden on our public finances.

In KCC’s defence, the ultimate responsibility to deal with this lies with the government.

Colin Bullen

Labour will be the same in power

Funnier than even Alf Archer’s silly letter the other week about the Reform Party was the one from Labour’s Roger Truelove denouncing the iniquities of Tory privatisation.

It was Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson who once said “a week is a long time in politics.” In which case 14 years must seem like an eternity.

New Labour was in office from 1997 to 2010, in which it had ample time to reverse the privatisations of the Thatcher/Major years but did nothing. In fact, it pursued the same free market dogma and, to all extents and purposes, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown might just as well have been Maggie Thatcher marks two and three.

John Prescott, Labour’s tub-thumping, barn-storming transport minister, was going to renationalise the railways but it never happened.

Labour talks socialist in opposition but acts Tory once in power. We’ve heard it all before. Umpteen times.

John Helm

Don’t reform House of Lords - abolish it

It really is quite farcical to pretend that we live in a democracy when the House of Lords, an unelected upper house - packed with cronies, financial supporters and Church of England prelates - can block the will of the elected lower chamber, the House of Commons.

A classic example of the tail wagging the dog if ever there was!

People have been calling for reform of the House of Lords for more than 100 years.

But it doesn’t need reforming, it needs to be abolished altogether and replaced with an elected body.

Then, and only then, can we truly claim to be a democracy.

Bob Readman

Voters have become very cynical

We won't have to wait too long now before the date for a general election is declared, signalling the usual round of parties setting out their stall to coerce people into casting their vote for them.

However, there is a growing cynicism amongst the electorate who don't anticipate that the policies and pledges proffered will be enacted.

This is often the case that few of the policies are implemented, whoever secures a mandate to govern.

If they're not watered down, they are kicked into the long grass, or the exorbitant costs are given as a reason to abandon the pledges made during the election.

The deception isn't appreciated but not entirely unexpected, the game of politics rarely achieves a win for the public.

The opposition parties might barrack the government for not fulfilling their declared intentions, despite being dead set against them from the outset.

But they are, nevertheless, secretly grateful to have a stick to beat them with!

Michael Smith

Many in debt just refuse to go without

I don’t care how much Mary Kerr, Chris Denham, and John Cooper extrapolate about how much easier it was in our time than today.

At 15 years of age I had to keep myself clean and uniform pressed and god help us If we weren’t. My mum used to say soap and water costs nothing and there is no need to be dirty. We had a tin bath - yes, a tin bath - where mum filled it up with water from a gas boiler, and we each in turn used to get into it to wash ourselves. As I said, there is no need for anyone regardless of their situation to send children to school dirty.

There wasn’t any welfare, or very little, and child benefit was only paid for the second child.

My parents had to cope with rationing after the war. There were no food banks as such, except maybe a soup kitchen.

As I have said before, I have seen ‘real’ poverty all over the world and I’ve yet to see it in this country.

Families don’t need ‘stuff’ to live in the modern world, whatever ‘stuff’ means - probably mobile phones, TVs and McDonald’s.

They should live by that old adage that if you cannot afford it, you simply don’t have it. But that’s the problem - people won’t go without and end up in debt.

Sid Anning