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

More investment needed for cancer treatment

Following the budget, the new government is intending to invest billions of pounds in additional health facilities, not least to treat cancer.

I am immediately concerned because, as I write, I am expecting to start a course later this week of radiotherapy for prostate cancer.

We must never cease to thank the front-line health staff for their unfailing skill and hard work. But at a higher level, the treatment available is questionable.

There are currently major advances concerning the treatment of prostate cancer. These include better targeted radiotherapy using more complex and advanced machines. These offer better outcomes whilst entailing fewer sessions of treatment and therefore less ongoing cost.

More experimentally, use of intensive ultrasound may improve treatment still further. And there are future prospects for preventative treatments such as vaccination.

I am referring to cancer treatments for men; but there are even more vital needs for women, for instance for breast cancer and cervical cancer. Current interventions, such as mastectomies and hysterectomies, are essential but are appalling. We desperately need better alternatives.

A major problem is that new equipment to treat cancer is funded nationally. It is very expensive initially but results in reduced costs and better outcomes.

Unfortunately, it is very noticeable that major investments are made in London and in northern cities, whilst outlying areas, including East Kent in particular, are overlooked.

Kent and Medway have a new medical school but it has never been funded adequately. We need much greater investment for world quality research and training, not least relating to cancer, as well as for excellent day to day medical care.

Finally, we could have wonderful hospitals, but cancer sufferers will not be treated effectively if GPs do not see patients promptly and make referrals for specialist treatment whenever necessary.

Frederic Stansfield

Weight loss drug won’t cure the workshy

The NHS are planning to give 1.6 million in free jabs to obese unemployed people in order to entice them to get back to the workplace.

The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has described, 'widening waistbands' are placing a burden on the NHS.

The cost of obesity-led illnesses is estimated to be £11 billion a year - even more than smoking.

Being overweight, however, is not an illness and can be tackled by taking practical steps like reducing food intake and adopting regular exercise.

The irony is that those who are workshy have a greater propensity to snack when they're confined to a home environment.

And I suspect that there would be a rush of applicants to receive their free offer of Ozempic to reduce their weight but it wouldn't succeed in enticing many of them to obtain employment and relinquish their languid lifestyle.

It's a rash experiment that could easily fail to achieve its purpose.

Michael Smith

Fighting losing battle over global warming

On the letters page last week, Stephanie Boucher warns us about building on flood plains and Mike Baldwin warns us about the Climate Feedback Loop and its implications for civilization.

I don't necessarily disagree with what they say. I fear however that the "let's stop global warming ship" has sailed.

It was never clear that "global warming" was all industrial revolution induced, after all there has been global warming and cooling throughout recorded history and before that.

Similarly, with the devastating floods that recently hit Spain, there have always been devastating floods. Even if the Biblical one is over-hyped and/or allegorical we know that the fertile crescent of the Middle East was prone to devastating floods, the Chinese rivers have always been prone to devastating floods and even this country has been hit by such floods prior to industrialisation.

The answer has always been to accept that this is what nature does, it can be fickle, and to prepare for it; as Stephanie Boucher says, is it wise to build in flood plains, is it wise to canalise rivers and throttle the flow upstream?

The answer has to be no, but to prepare the country for extreme weather events; instead of which we have allowed ourselves to be guided by green, anti-industrial zealots into wasting our monies on trying to stop the unstoppable.

For 30 years we have hubristicly claimed we could stop the climate warming and have failed, think of the ameliorative works we could have spent the money on instead, there are plenty of small scale examples but where has been the government funding for major projects?

Time to change direction and learn to live with a changed climate, all the green "fluff" in the world is not going to stop it.

Bob Britnell

Nature being destroyed to build new housing

Every celebrity interviewed seems to say "I'm at my happiest in nature" or "I love being close to nature."

If you live around here, this will be impossible. "Nature" is currently being obliterated by housing estates. Every green field and space I have known is being obscured by buildings. Every road and driveway is preventing water entering the soil. Every tree is being chopped down.

As every village hopelessly puts up banners - "No more houses" - it seems it will never end. I despair.

Olga Danes-Volkov

One way of freeing up land

Surely I can’t be the first to imagine a link between the latest budget forcing some farmers to sell land and Labour’s ambitious house building plans.

Stephen O'Connell

Tax rise complaints coming from the richest

So, we have a new government at last, after 14 years of enduring a sad bunch of self-aggrandising politicians.

During this time a projected high-speed railway was planned, financed, started and then cancelled. We were promised new hospitals, all 29 of them, that were never built, so people still have to queue for health care.

Educational expenditure was cut, which meant that we lost Sure Start and all sorts of other educational benefits.

Local Government was made to work to a strictly set budget so that many local facilities up and down the country suffered.

Finally, it can be no surprise to anyone, we have just rid ourselves of this bunch of incompetents and voted in a new government.

The new government are now working their way through this shambles of policy-making but they are faced with a problem, not of what to do about our situation but where to start.

They must begin to analyse what prime issues need reform then calculate the cost of their new policies, which we will all have to live with.

There are two ways in which governments can pay for improvements, borrow large amounts of money from banks which will still have to be paid back, including interest, over many years or raise money from the citizens by means of taxes.

The budget has now described how we are all being asked to help pay.

Not surprising that everyone would prefer not to pay taxes, but what is surprising is that most of the noise about paying more is coming from those who seem to have the most money and can afford to pay something extra.

Derek Munton

Calm down and embrace Trump

Whilst apologising in advance to those on the left of the Labour Party, I just can't help but take my hat off to Donald J. Trump.

First they tried to drag him down in the courts, then there were the assassination attempts, and if that wasn't bad enough, they got one failing President to stand aside for what they thought was a better person to beat him. And it all failed.

For what we have witnessed in the last few months has not just been the best political campaign of all time that was completely under appreciated by the media but also the best comeback in living history.

I can't wait to see what Donald Trump's second term will bring but one thing I will say is that those on the Labour left must calm down and appreciate this guy because throwing insults will only backfire with tariffs on businesses who, along with Sir Keir Starmer, should be sitting down and doing big deals and renewing our special relationship with the USA sooner rather than later.

Geoffrey Brooking

Swift U-turn by new ministers

The day after Trump’s win in the US Presidential election, our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who has on a number of occasions previously described Trump as a neo-Nazi sympathiser, sociopath and woman hater and even said he would take to the streets in protest if Trump comes here, sent a grovelling letter to the President Elect, saying how much he was looking forward to working with him in the years to come.

It’s comforting to see our Foreign Secretary demonstrating in no uncertain terms that he is a man of principle!

Bob Readman

Student policies ignore life in the real world

The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci advocated “The Long March through the Institutions”, describing slowly winning over the chief institutions that determine the direction of a culture, and thereby creating a soft revolution from within those institutions.

The focus is on the universities, then the unions, the arts, the schools, the media, then corporations, and finally the society as a whole.

Ideas that do not match Marxist frameworks are seen as the enemy, and despite denials about its reality made by the Left, its existence is a fact, and has now succeeded, perhaps beyond their wildest dreams.

The brainwashing of youngsters, at schools, and in universities, has led to the economic nostrums of Marxism, or at least, socialism to become embedded in many of those who go on to become members of our political elites, and we now see the results in the current government’s promotion of policies which ignore the real world in favour of these false ideas absorbed as students.

We have always needed intelligent people, including such geniuses as Newton, Darwin and Hawkins but not narcissistic intellectuals, who are always wrong and do immense damage to our society. One has only to remember those Eastern Europeans, finally escaping from socialist oppression, who cried openly when they first saw something as normal as the goods available in Western supermarkets.

Only capitalism has generated the prosperity we have enjoyed in the past, and adolescent beliefs in the false god of socialism, as are clearly held by the majority of the Left, will, if they can manipulate the levers of power, destroy it.

Colin Bullen

Spend defence money on improving lives

At this time of the year we remember those who died in war.

Remembrance Day marks the end of the ‘war to end war’ and yet now, 100 years later, the world is ravaged by war.

The weapons of war are far more deadly and destructive than those of previous wars. The targets now are homes, schools, hospitals, with the main casualties civilians (mainly women and children).

Britain has the fourth highest expenditure on defence amongst all countries of the world. It is claimed that this is for defence but it is accepted, for example, that Trident will only be used in retaliation in what is called mutually assured destruction (MAD).

We no longer face the danger of invasion. The Romans came for copper and tin. We no longer have resources other nations desire. The wealth of the ruling class is built on invisible capital through financial markets that can be as easily lost as gained.

As a nation, it would be better for us, and for the world, to devote the money being wasted on weapons that we will never use towards improving life in this country and giving support to other nations in need, thereby setting an example for other nations to follow.

By making peace a priority, the skill that we claim to have in the world of diplomacy would be put to a positive purpose.

Ralph A. Tebbutt