From defence spending to Ulez, our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent in their letters to the editor...

Some letters refer to past correspondence which can be found by clicking here.

World tyrants on the march

In this country, public discourse is dominated by nonsense about pronouns; our education system is brainwashing youngsters into believing that Britain is somehow uniquely guilty of past sins, while ignoring the fact that we saved the world from Nazism; cultural icons are attacked by the woke, who are now out of control and we are sacrificing our industrial strength by fixating on reducing the 1% of global greenhouse gases we produce to zero, in pursuit of an unproven theory.

At the same time the totalitarian states are on the march, in Russia’s case literally, while we allow our defences to shrink to the point where, as some American generals have said, we are becoming incapable of defending our nation from aggression.

Do we never learn? At the Armistice in 1918 we had the largest navy, the largest air force and the most efficient army in the world.

Yet 20 years later, following what Churchill described as the ‘years the locusts ate’, we faced the terrible power of Nazi Germany with a tiny army, an ageing, although still the largest, navy, and an air force with tremendous potential, but outnumbered by the Luftwaffe.

We won but, as Wellington said of Waterloo, it was “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life”.

Should we continue to neglect our defences, and, as a consequence, go down to defeat, all those who attach great importance to nonsensical issues will find that such things are irrelevant to the victors.

Colin Bullen

Build a society based on needs

I find the Letters to the Editor the most interesting page.

Invariably my passions are aroused and my intellect stimulated.

I am a ‘non conformist’, today this is reflected in my social and political views.

The essence of non-conformism is to question and challenge - first one’s own positions, then the prevailing positions in society.

If I have pride in anything it is in the working class who guided and cared for me in my childhood and youth.

As for being an Englishman, I read widely in the history of this country and find many things of which I am ashamed, such as the Highland clearances in Scotland, the witch trials, the way that the members of Cromwell’s model army were treated when they remained loyal to the aims for which they fought when Cromwell deserted those aims and punished those who opposed him.

The role that we played in establishing the slave trade.

More recently the way we have treated the Irish in their desire for their own country, the appalling way we are treating refugees and the level of racism so prevalent in society.

I am proud of those who throughout history have stood up for the common people.

I recently read a short piece by Adorno, the German philosopher who discusses the idea of ‘genuineness’ in which he states that “the identity of the genuine with the true is untenable”.

His statement is based upon the fact that what we are comes from the society of which we are part.

I do not know the background of my fellow correspondents but I do know the community that nourished and sustained me. My aim in life is to be true to them.

That makes me a critique of modern life and an advocate of a better society which can only come when we rid society of the competitive basis of capitalism and build a society based on our joint communal needs.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

Ulez all set to make things worse

I saw the TV show about the Ulez extension to outer London and I have to say I found it lacking in balance and objectivity.

The BBC is a humbug and a hypocrite, by on the one hand in its other programmes, harping on about the looming catastrophes of climate change and pollution and then when it deems expedient, it is running with the hounds over a measure that will reduce carbon emissions and pollution.

No one it appears is faulting the logic of Ulez, no one says it doesn’t do what it says on the tin, London pollution has improved with evidence for small initial Ulez effect; it appears like St Augustine, KCC will only be chaste in terms of Ulez at some time in the future.

In less than seven years, sales of all diesel and petrol cars will cease anyway, so what is the problem?

It couldn’t be that there is an election in the offing and various parts of the Tory party are looking for a hook to fire up their base in challenging times.

If it is, I hope you can explain your reasons to all those families who have lost loved ones, who died from a cause that was entirely preventable.

Richard Styles

Action needed on human rights

Readers will have their own views on Rishi Sunak’s much-discussed five pledges, but here are five commitments on human rights that we didn’t hear from the Prime Minister.

One: a pledge to scrap reckless plans to rip up the invaluable Human Rights Act, replacing it with a totally inadequate (so-called) Bill of Rights Bill.

Two: a pledge to handle asylum claims fairly, humanely and efficiently, rather than criminalising people and threatening them with deportation to Rwanda.

Three: a pledge to ditch the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill which makes a mockery of the rule of law, denying justice to victims while shielding perpetrators of serious crimes.

Four: a pledge to halt draconian new measures that would further undermine the cherished right to free speech and peaceful protest in our country.

Five: a pledge to ensure our foreign policy becomes more ethical so that, for instance, the UK challenges abuses by countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia as firmly as it challenges abuses by Russia and Iran.

Graham Minter

Amnesty International Kent Network

Is Facebook being used?

Many people get their news, both national and local, from Facebook.

Often the local news and information is picked up from community groups on Facebook.

But who runs these “community” groups and are they being run for the community or to push a political agenda?

Across the country, one political party is increasingly using Facebook groups to manage the news and information people see online, and to push their own political agenda.

This is breaking Facebook’s terms of service.

There are a number of closed “community” groups on Facebook being managed by a small number of individuals who belong to or are closely aligned to one political party.

If you are a member of a “community” group on Facebook, there are a number of questions you need to ask.

Are the admins closely linked to one political party rather than being politically neutral?

Does the group have a closed membership? Are people refused entry or banned from the group?

Are there regular political posts from the same one or two people?

Do you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which people’s views were unknowingly being manipulated on Facebook?

Check the groups you belong to. Stay safe on social media.

Nicholas Pope

Bus services are vital to society in many ways

With reference to our disappearing bus services.

The bus industry believes it was set up to fail over the Bus Service Improvement plan idea, as it believes that the Department of Transport, thinks that shutting down bus services and replacing them with algorithm driven ring and ride services will save money.

Unfortunately, these direct response travel schemes cost as much as running a normal service, and are less reliable and popular with passengers, thus reducing passenger numbers not increasing them.

For the next few decades (maybe to the end of the century) our society is going to age, with a much larger 60+ cohort, who may not be able or willing to drive. How will people move around without bus services?

How will we fix increasing levels of congestion, fit more traffic on the same highway infrastructure and manage a limited supply of parking spaces?

What about pollution and decarbonising transport?

The bus can deliver all these benefits and give a far better return on an investment, than road building or developing autonomous vehicles.

But it takes planning, innovation and perseverance; characteristics that are themselves in short supply.

The local bus fleet is ageing and the old-fashioned policy of retaining double deck buses for services for which they are not suited to, harks back to the halcyon days of the 1950s and is not helping.

There is a way forward, but it takes initiative, positivity and drive.

I would like to hope that is what we will see in the coming months.

Richard Styles

Why I think new county town is needed for Kent

Many of my friends agree with me that Canterbury deserves to be the County Town of Kent. Over the years Maidstone has deteriorated gradually and now there is little left but coffee shops, boarded-up outlets and an inadequate bus service. Pollution has increased alarmingly because of an increase of out-of-town outlets.

“Time to leave your car and take the bus” is displayed on the back of buses.

Timetables have changed again and there are fewer buses available.

The bus station is an unwelcoming polluted area.

Nowhere comfortable to sit, a health risk for the elderly particularly. No one available to supply information.

What do you see as you look across the river?

Not a state of the art theatre/concert hall but HobbyCraft, TKMaxx etc.

Lower Stone Street is unattractive.

Canterbury has so much more to offer (even Tonbridge is more attractive – many outlets which have closed here have re-located there. Of course people are shopping out of town – no park and ride and car park charges are too high. No designer shops etc etc.

Mary Adam

Argument not up to scratch

I would like to comment in relation to Colin Bullen’s letter responding to my criticism he had failed to back his accusation the BBC is being run by members of a Liberal elite. If I was to pick up the red pen I once used when I was marking ‘secondary school A’ level history essays, I would have written: ‘Good. You are now using evidence to back up your arguments. Your next step is to make sure that your evidence is relevant to them.’

The evidence he mostly used was taken from George Orwell’s essay, ‘England Your England’, written in 1940, which made reference to the ‘English Left-wing Intelligentsia’ whose influence was confined to ‘half a dozen weekly and monthly papers’.

Its members were focused on events in 1930s Europe and the Second World War, which broke out in 1939. Yet Mr Bullen’s would have us believe that, as he says, ‘The individuals have changed but the mindset persists’, a staggering 83 years later, in the unimaginably different social, economic and political context of Britain in 2023.

I would suggest that if Mr Bullen wishes to convince readers about the existence and pernicious influence in the media of a Liberal elite, that he stop trying to use evidence from the past and stick to the present.

John Cooper