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

Migrant numbers affect health and housing

Apparently without realising it, Rhys Griffiths (‘There are far more pressing issues in Kent than the small boats crisis’) supplies the answer to his own assertion that the average reader of your paper has more important things to think about than uncontrolled immigration.

According to his reading of the situation, your readers are far more concerned with issues like getting an appointment to see a doctor or finding affordable housing. To that list he might have added finding school places, securing welfare benefits and a functional police service.

But he misses the point. If we continue to encourage uncontrolled immigration, then the health and housing issues he considers far more pressing will only continue to get worse.

f we insist on leaving the back door open to any economic migrant who is prepared to do business with the people smugglers, then our already high taxes will have to be hiked ever higher just to pay for the additional demand created by such immigration at a time when public services are already inadequate to cope with the people who already live here.

Just putting up our uninvited guests in hotel accommodation is costing the country £10 million a day. You could buy a lot of doctors and nurses for that sort of money.

Also Mr Griffiths might spare a thought for the genuine asylum seekers who are, I fear, pushed aside by the thousands of economic migrants who are able and willing to pay for the services of the criminal gangs which run the small boat crossing services. Every one of the migrants who enter the country that way makes it less likely that the country will be able and willing to offer asylum to those people who are in genuine need of it.

Antony Ward

Putting a stop to crossings is vitally important

Regarding your article about the small boat crisis, how the 'groupthinkers' among us must have loved that and the individual quoted in your street survey as saying: 'I believe they are trying to distract us with the issue of immigration, which is not important or vital...'

In the last decade of my working life I worked alongside and on an equal basis with people from around the world and they were always workmates and/or friends, just people, regardless of their colour or ethnicity. I mention this simply to belie the ‘racist’ taunts.

The stream of mainly young, unidentified people crossing the Channel is the greatest threat this country has faced since the Cold War and must be stopped, not abdicated to another country, (Rwanda, etc). The cost of housing and caring for these people is astronomical and a dreadful burden on public services, the economy and taxpayers and grows bigger by the day. No matter how many barges dear Rishi finds, or how many hotels are handed over, the burden will only increase.

So I assure you, this matter is vitally important and needs stopping before it is too late.

Finally, I fear that our current globalist based government have neither the will nor the desire to really deal with this and will just continue to 'tinker' around the edges, harvesting soundbites and photo opportunities.

Alan King

Repeated myths around immigration

Against a background of government rhetoric becoming increasingly toxic and adopting far-right slogans like ‘Stop the boats’, it was heartening to read that an international survey of people across 29 countries has found that British people had the third most enthusiastic attitude towards refugees, just behind Spain and the Netherlands.

Many people in Britain make the distinction between refugees from famine or conflict, who they see as “deserving” migrants, and economic migrants who come to Britain in search of work, who are seen as “undeserving”.

One of the people who make this distinction is Colin Bullen. Unfortunately, he weakened his case against them when he wrote in his letter that these economic migrants were, as he said “jumping the queue for consideration for genuine asylum”.

In fact this is a myth. As Andy Hewitt, head at the Refugee Council said last year, there is no queue to jump and the vast majority will have no other way to come to the UK and claim asylum. Seven out of ten go on to be recognised as refugees by the government.

Mr Bullen went on to accuse the young men who were undeserving migrants as putting pressure on the NHS and available housing and taking the jobs of the lowest paid. By this point it is clear that he is no longer talking about economic migrants but has descended into an attack on migrants in general.

The myth that migrants put pressure on the NHS with health issues and high birth rates was debunked in a Lancet ‘Commission on Migration and Health’ report in 2018. Professor Abubakar, the Commission Chair from the University of London said: “Migrants are healthier and contribute to our economy and the NHS. There is no evidence migrants are a drain on the NHS or that they spread infectious diseases. Exclusion of migrants in health systems and increasingly negative rhetoric is political and not evidence based”.

That just about sums up much of what is said and written about immigration in Britain today – political and not evidence based.

John Cooper

Dangers of trial by social media

I do not support the left liberal social policies espoused by Nicola Sturgeon, and her successor Humza Yousaf, nor do I wish to see the UK broken up, yet there is one aspect of the latest furore which highlights a serious problem. As things stand, she has been released from police custody without charge, and is therefore, at the moment, innocent in the eyes of the law. Mr Yousaf, while not impressing in his first months in office, does deserve respect for refusing to apply sanctions, such as suspending, or expelling, Ms Sturgeon from the SNP, because allegations are proof of nothing, and she is entitled to be treated as innocent unless, and until, she is found guilty by a court.

It is this acceptance by far too many that to be accused of something illegal is to be automatically guilty, and which results in trial by Twitter, rather than by a jury of their peers. I remember speaking to someone many years ago, who, on being appointed to a jury, thought that the fact that the police had brought the case, meant that the defendants could not be innocent, and that was before the arrogant buffoons of social media were able to weigh in with their condemnations of those whom they did not know, and without any real knowledge of the facts. This rush to judgement is compounded by the way in which much of the media jump on the same bandwagon.

Too often people are suspended from their jobs, or even banned from their profession based upon no more than unsubstantiated accusations, and even if cleared of wrong doing, are marked by some as suspect, and usually are not able to resume their lives with adequate compensation for what they may have endured in lost employment and reputation.

Of course, those actually guilty should be punished to the full extent of the law, but anyone who supports the kind of treatment meted out to those at the receiving end of allegations should beware, as anyone, including them, can fall victim to lies, as the principle of innocent unless proved guilty is gradually being eroded.

Too often there may be an agenda behind accusations, as has happened when schoolchildren, offended by being told off, have been known to blackmail teachers by warning that they would make unjustified accusations of sexual abuse. Clearly there are many instances when there is truth in the claims, but not always. In the past ‘he said, she said’ as the only facts would not have resulted in a viable case, but now this seems to be overlooked.

The ’no smoke without fire’ brigade infesting social media would never accept that they might be wrong, so the media should ignore these ignoramuses, not assist them by giving them publicity.

Colin Bullen

Voters were conned over Brexit

I find it truly gratifying that my efforts have not gone unnoticed (C. Aighgy, letters). I shall continue to point out Brexit hypocrisy, selfishness and Brexit supporters who are now fleeing the sinking ship.

I must underline that I refer to those at the top of the tree, not the average person who was conned, as eruditely pointed out by Ken Chapman.

Honesty is the best policy and slowly but surely it appears voters are seeing the mendacity and greed that drove the anti-EU campaign.

Robert Boston

Woke civil service myth

Regarding Colin Bullen’s letter on bureaucrats taking over from politicians. After a similar Mail article by the journalist Richard Littlejohn, headed “nothing less than a coup is taking place in Britain”, Mandrake, a writer in The New European, responded by arguing: “His contention that the ultra-woke civil service and renegade Tories still loyal to the EU are working to destroy an elected government would of course be front page news if Littlejohn could have named a single one of these dastardly plotters. That he failed to do, most probably because they do not exist”.

Littlejohn is well known as a right wing polemical writer and only the politically gullible would actually believe the article to be factual.

Steve Tasker

Climate change effects are obvious

How much more evidence do people need before they accept that climate change is happening?

Some of the main effects, already visible, are the melting of ice leading to a rise in sea levels. With this large areas will be flooded. Floods are already causing severe problems in countries such a Bangladesh from other effects of climate change.

The level of species lost in present times is approaching the levels known from pre-history which were extreme examples of species loss. There is an expectation that rising temperatures will lead to the desertification of large areas of the globe. Gardeners will be aware that the plants that grow and prosper in present conditions are changing.

The weather is no longer as reliable as we once knew it to be.

These are not the literary inventions of science fiction writers. They are the evidence (facts) and information coming from serious scientists, in a number of fields of study, whose work is devoted to studying these issues.

I recently listened to a lecturer reporting on how heat was being absorbed by the deep oceans and the effect of this.

I am by no means an expert on these subjects, but I do listen to those who are. Sadly scientists can only present evidence and give warnings.

It is politicians who make decisions. The priorities which drive the decisions of these politicians are in conflict with the actions needed to address the problems of climate change.

One simple example is that the private car is responsible for half the greenhouse gas emissions and yet the Government persists in reducing expenditure on public transport, devaluing and downgrading the provision of these services.

For politicians to claim that the evidence is not available simply reflects the refusal of those politicians to face up to the needs of humanity.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

Majority oppose this cruel trade

As a protester for many years against live animal exports from Ramsgate and Dover, I believed that once we left Europe this dreadful trade would cease.

The Conservative government constantly assured us that the UK would no longer then be obligated to send farm animals abroad for slaughter.

Many people will recall that In 2012, over 40 sheep were euthanised by the RSPCA when they arrived at Ramsgate too badly injured during transport to be exported overseas.

Thanet District Council then imposed a temporary ban on live animal exports for just five weeks hoping this might finish this awful trade. But instead, they were fined millions of pounds for stopping the free movement of so-called goods.

Our government announced that if we voted for Brexit, the UK would ban live animal exports, no longer having to adhere to EU laws.

There was great suffering caused to the farm animals that left Ramsgate.

They would arrive in convoys of three to five tiered lorries and had already been travelling for many hours from different parts of the country, without food or water. They then had to endure crossing the Channel in an inadequate river boat where they were tossed around, sustaining horrific injuries only to travel for many more hours to face a brutal death.

I am, therefore, appalled by the blatant betrayal by this government who have abandoned the Kept Animals Bill which included a ban on this dreadful trade, as well as other improvements in animal welfare.

The majority of the public are strongly opposed to the export of live animals for slaughter and should demand that our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. reinstate the Kept Animals Bill immediately to honour the government's pledge to ban these horrific live exports.

Vivien Clifford

My tip for the top job

Colin Bullen for Prime Minister.

Miss V. Hemsley-Flint