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

Charting our national demise

The letter published last week from John Cooper indicated that there were many reasons to be cheerful in Britain.

Having lived here now for eight decades, I’m really wondering whether John and I live in the same country.

In no particular order, I offer the following thematic evidential areas of national demise or problems.

Standards of governance, physical and mental health systems, education, diseases, care of the elderly, state of the economy, the national debt, quantitative easing, terrorism, micro-plastics, cancer rates, biodiversity collapse, fresh water availability, buil- in obsolescence, grade inflation of exams, ecosystems instability and decline, inequality and income disparity, poverty, homelessness, retailing, litter, climate change, forest fires, flooding, quality of TV, soil loss, over-fishing, fraud, state of the roads, water and air pollution, necessary security measures, pollinator decline, farming demise, corporate isolation, armed police on the streets, cyber scamming and hacking, anti-social behaviour, money laundering, forced migrations, company monopolies, super-power rivalries, dietary habits, human population growth rates, frequency of human and other pandemics, invasive species, hospital and GP waiting lists, long-term illnesses, traffic congestion, non-availability of social or affordable housing, etc, etc.

From my perspective, and to misquote Harold MacMillan: “We’ve never had it so bad”.

Dr Geoff Meaden

Our voting system keeps extremists at bay

Matt Nightingale bangs a well-worn drum in support of proportional representation and in doing so accepts that this might well mean that parties with which he may not sympathise do get into government.

Those who sympathise with PR should perhaps look at the result of the Dutch elections with a right-wing anti-immigration party winning the majority of seats; hopefully they'll be able to form a government without too many compromises. That would be unlike the situation in Spain where it looks like the losing parties, of the left, may well gang up to stop the right-wing party which gained most seats from forming a government. Is that democratic?

Or how about Israel as an example of a functioning democracy, which it is, but any government has to be a coalition, usually including radical religious groups, that's given them the running sore of Jewish settlements on Arab land in the West Bank. Or perhaps look at Weimar Germany in the 1930s, PR gave them the Nazi Party and that didn't end well for anyone.

The strength of our two-party system is that each party is actually a coalition of people on either the left or right of British politics, each in turn has assimilated hard-liners and has taken a centrist approach, politically to the left or right of the centre but never extremely so. Of course, those on the outer arms of our two political galaxies will always see some of the others as extremists and some of them will be, but they will not have enough influence to turn our politics extreme. As we learnt with Jeremy Corbyn, British voters eschew extremism.

Of course, that does mean that smaller parties get lost in the system; but as they usually hold at least one view that is out of kilter with the majority of voters, that is to be expected.

Our democracy works, it needs no change, except that the upper house needs less politicians, ex-MPs and political appointments; what it doesn't need is elected members, it just needs more non-political people.

Bob Britnell

Biased reports are fuelling anti-semitism

Although the BBC leads the field in displaying anti-Israeli prejudice, such as putting forward the absurd view that the numerous automatic weapons found in the Al-Shifa hospital might belong to the hospital security department, many of the reporters from Sky News are also singing from the same hymn sheet.

While it has been a pleasure to see straight-talking Israeli spokesmen confound those who attack Israel, one of the former was recently reduced to a temporary stunned silence by the utter stupidity of a question which stated that, as 150 Palestinians were to be released in exchange for 50 Israelis, did this not mean that Israel regarded the lives of the former as being less valuable. When he recovered his composure the Israeli pointed out what was obvious to anyone with half a brain, that Hamas insisted on this ratio, indeed at first demanded more, and that to insist on the implementation of a one for one exchange, as Israel would prefer, would mean no swap at all.

The broadcast media consistently discounts any statements by the IDF, claiming that they are unverified, but blatantly accepts assertions by the terrorists, from accusations of Israel bombing a hospital, later proved to be untrue, to denials by Hamas of hospitals being used as military command sites. The latter has been shown to be correct, yet still such reporters will not accept the evidence of their own eyes. One senior BBC reporter later admitted that he had been wrong about such claims, but then said "I don't regret a thing”. The bias and arrogance of these people is almost beyond belief.

It is a disgrace that this relentless pro-Hamas propaganda is fuelling anti-semitic demonstrations in Western cities, and is influencing politicians to demand a ceasefire which would leave Israel at the mercy of future outrages.

Colin Bullen

Hard to reason with brainwashed minds

I have exactly the same sympathy for Hamas and the Palestinians as my parents and their generation had for the Berliners when we were bombing them - ie: none at all.

The Palestinians had a democracy and voted for a terrorist organisation whose sole aim is the eradication of Jews and Israel. They no longer have a democracy and Hamas is doing exactly what they were elected to do, attack Israel and kill Jews. So they are getting exactly what they voted for. They cannot be reasoned with because the brainwashing goes that deep.

There are no moderate Imams in Palestine. Muslims do not believe in democracy and civil law, they are run by their church leaders who are the only source of law and that is gods law as they interpret it. There isn’t any tolerance of anything that goes against that. It is medieval.

I have watched a couple of interviews with the leaders of Hamas. In one he totally denied that Hamas attacked Israel and that the interviewer was being deceived by Israeli propaganda, when the interviewer stated that she had seen the destruction he said that the Israelis had done it themselves to their own people to justify attacking peaceful Palestinians. When the interviewer questioned the tunnels under hospitals he said that they don’t exist. When the interviewer pointed out the photographs of the tunnels he said the Israeli forces were digging them.

You can’t reason or argue with people with this mindset.

Alan Hardie-Storey

One civilian death is too many

I am accused by Colin Bullen of ‘swallowing anti-Israeli propaganda.’ So cutting off food, water, fuel and electricity to Gaza inhabitants is just a Hamas fabrication then, as no doubt is the order for them to vacate their homes in just 24 hours.

Likewise, I suspect the round the clock bombing and shelling that the world has witnessed over the last few weeks is simply fake news or misinformation. We must all be imagining things!

I said any civilian death was one too many - whether Israeli or Palestinian - but I’m not aware that Mr Bullen has condemned any Palestinian deaths caused by a gung-ho and trigger-happy IDF.

The State of Israel was created by displacing inhabitants who lived there for centuries. Israel’s ‘right to exist’ is the right to annex and occupy another land. It’s the right of the strong to dominate the weak, or the rich to exploit the poor.

John Helm

Behave like a statesman, not a teenager

Oh dear, poor old Rishi Sunak has made himself look rather foolish in snubbing the Greek Prime Minister over the Elgin marbles.

What a contrast to two former A-list politicians, one returned to the fold like the prodigal son and another regularly voicing his erudite opinions on matters of state:

David Cameron, now Lord Cameron, appears to be efficiently and uncontroversially getting things done, notably visits to Ukraine and Israel, without any stamping of feet.

Then we have George Osborne, now chair of the British Museum diplomatically stating that the negotiations over the above-mentioned ancient artefacts will continue. It seems an eminently sensible plan to me and I wish the former Chancellor good luck in his mission.

Rishi Sunak has to learn that if one wishes to be a statesman on the world stage, one has to act like one and not like a disgruntled teenager.

Robert Boston

Our democracy has many faults

Isn’t it high time we questioned what ‘our democracy’ is? After all, we have a monarchy, which receives an annual ‘Sovereign Grant’: 2022-23 this was £86.3 million. But the Royal Family also has a huge private income from the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster, so why do we have to pay them a fortune annually?

We have two Houses of Parliament, one of which is unelected. A recent report by the government states that ‘the total cost per member of the (unelected) House of Lords was £38,000’. So the c. 800 Lords cost us about £3.4 million every year. High cost for a non-democratic parliament. We must also consider the position of our elected Members of Parliament in the House of Commons: they can hold second jobs, sit on company boards and can lobby for companies/outside interests. So is your MP representing you or the company providing her/him with a multi-million pound holiday?

Have you been asked if you approve these non-democratic aspects of our ‘democracy’? I certainly haven’t and want many serious changes so that we do become a ‘democracy’.

Marika Sherwood

Women should live free from violence

November 25 saw the start of 16 Days of Activism, the worldwide campaign to combat violence against women and girls (VAWG).

Almost one in three women across the globe experiences physical and/orsexual violence in her lifetime, but contrary to expectations, most VAWG isn’t from a stranger on the street; it comes from the very people they should be safest with.

Each week, two women are murdered by their current or former partner, while it’s estimated three more will take their own lives because of domestic abuse.

Around 1.4 million women aged 16-74 in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2023, a figure little changed from the year before. Annually, 85,000 women experience rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.

VAWG affects more than the women and girls involved; their children, families, communities and our economy are all impacted.

According to the Office of National Statistics, one in 11 households in England who were homeless or threatened with homelessness cited domestic abuse as the main reason. I myself have talked to many women living on the streets because they have fled abuse and this has only been exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis.

VAWG costs the UK an estimated £40bn a year in the costs to the criminal justice system, the NHS, social care and housing, a figure widely accepted to be under-estimated.

It’s time to end this pandemic of violence and proactively protect women.

Many abusers are repeat offenders; giving our police better resources to identify the most dangerous abusers would help get them off the streets faster. Tougher sentences for rapists, stalkers and domestic abusers and murderers will also keep more women safe and let victims know their lives matter.

Most importantly, we need a societal and behavioural shift in attitudes towards women and a long-term change in the culture that allows VAWG to flourish.

There are no quick fixes, but that does not mean we should not aspire and work towards a world where everyone can live free of violence, fear and coercion.

Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, Labour councillor