From Britain's past to knife crime, 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.

People need more money in their pockets

I am a reluctant Conservative voter. The last time I voted Labour was for Tony Blair because part of his electoral promises was to change the voting system to get a democratic outcome at the polls, ie: the party in power would have more than 50% of the vote, not as we have now.

But being a politician he reneged on this promise when he got a huge majority.

I reluctantly vote Tory because I agree that trade is the primary engine that drives any economy but the Tory version of what is good for trade does not sit well with me. They are wholly concerned with businesses and not with the totality of what is required for trade to continue. Every business has one essential requirement in common - customers.

However, to be a customer you need the purchasing power to buy whatever the particular business has to sell.

When I was a child nobody bought a tea or coffee at a cafe because they didn’t have enough money. So there weren’t any cafes. Our holidays were camping because we couldn’t afford hotels. Our means of transport was the bus.

When the people that spend money got more spending power, cafes had customers and thrived. Holidays got more adventurous, airlines and airports expanded and employed thousands of people. People are now car owners in an industry that employs tens of thousands. All because the people who spend money have money to spend.

The government should be more concerned with generating customers to keep businesses going. Consumer spending is stagnating because they don’t have the same spending power as they did 12 years ago. After years of below inflation increases in income, the majority of consumers have now reached the end of the line with no available money to spend on non essentials.

Shell and BP made a combined profit of over £55 billion. This money has come out of the pockets of customers and should be circulating in the economy keeping all the businesses going. All businesses need to make a profit and that includes the customers. But the excess of these profits should be taken in taxes and given back to the people that spend, so that they can return to being customers.

Alan Hardie-Storey

Strange council policy ideas

The long winter is about to end, blossoms and daffodils are beginning to appear, and politicians start to think about their chances in the forthcoming council elections in May, which is why wonky policy ideas are flown like kites in a blustery mad march day.

KCC has set its budget, even though parts of it are not fully worked out. It doesn’t make for happy reading.

What they are trying to achieve is survival, leaving most services within a half life of doleful ineffectiveness (closed libraries, proliferating potholes and a careworn highway infrastructure).

Take Levelling Up as an example. Levelling Up is a given, yet our sure start children’s centres are being closed or cut down by melding them with other incompatible facilities (Kent County Council’s proposals to close children’s centres) yet the BBC reported that many of our selective schools are not giving special attention to attracting children from poor or deprived backgrounds. In fact, the further west one goes the percentage of students receiving the pupil premium decreases, in some cases, to very low single figures. Yet how do we enable children from a less wealthy background to succeed in life if we hamstring their chances at an early age?

Another anomaly is the £10 charge for out-of-Kent users at our household recycling waste centres. On the one hand KCC and others are lambasting the Mayor of London about the London Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) charge of £12.50 and why it should not be extended to the outer London boroughs, yet within the same breath KCC are intending to charge the residents of those London boroughs £10 a time for disposing of their waste at the tip.

Are we not missing the picture here? We want to see less fly tipping and lower emissions from vehicles, so why pursue policies that do the opposite? I keep being told by our latter day St Augustines that ULEZ is a great idea but just not now. If not now when?

KCC is in a bind. Adult social care is hollowing out the KCC budget and central government is responsible for delivering over rigorous austerity policies, now and in the past, and not restructuring local government in a sensible, viable manner. We will continue to live with the consequences, until reform and equitable financing for local government becomes necessary, because the pain of procrastination and special interests becomes too much to bear.

Richard Styles

Parents can help stop knife crime

There appears to be an alarming number of young men in society who deem it necessary to carry a knife.

I don’t pretend to understand the mindset of such individuals who, whether for their own protection (which can only serve to foster violence,) or to those with the explicit intention of inflicting harm on others are endangering our communities.

It has now become a pernicious trend which clearly has not been contained by the police or the judiciary.

People must be growing wary when they are out late at night as the fear of encountering youths disposed towards causing anti-social behaviour is a palpable concern.

How we tackle the escalation of knife crime is something that needs to be addressed by politicians, but ultimately, parents must shoulder the burden of responsibility for failing to install in their offspring a respectful and benevolent attitude towards others which would encompass the value of rejecting all acts of aggression.

Michael Smith

We must fight for better world

To respond to last week’s comments, may I ask, how can capitalism be the ‘best worst option’ when, today, we are faced with a critical situation regarding the climate, the threat of nuclear war and a war in which there seems to be no end as neither side is prepared to talk and both sides are increasing the level of weapons involved.

The whole of international policy is based on exerting the selfish aims of countries through competition, sanctions and war. The working class has no desire or need to exploit other people. They are quite content to ‘live and let live’.

Unfortunately, capitalism prevents this because it is based on the need to make profit and accumulate wealth for a few at the expense of the vast majority.

Whenever the ideas of socialism comes any where near implementation all the resources of the ruling class are deployed to defeat it. This happened in Russia when, after the revolution, for a short period the most progressive regime in terms of social life was implemented.

The response from our government along with 13 other countries was to invade, supporting the opposition, thus beginning the defeat of that revolution.

More recently we have seen the demonisation of Jeremy Corbyn, despite the fact that he received the support of thousands of people including many young people who saw a glimmer of hope in our distorted world.

Democracy is not something which our rulers hold dear. If they did they would not be introducing Photo ID which many people, especially those most deprived, do not have.

Do your readers really believe that the present world is the best that people can imagine or create? I will continue to argue for a world in which all people matter.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

Stop running down our country’s past

I feel sorry for any pupils taught by John Cooper, as he clearly sees history through the prism of his own political prejudice. Of course I am aware that Britain did not win the two world wars alone, but the fact remains that, despite the number of nations fighting on the Allied side in both, it was only Britain who fought against the forces of darkness from beginning to end, and, had we lost either, then certainly Europe, and in the second war, the world, would have seen the end of what we still hope is the journey towards the light.

The debacle of Norway, the evacuation at Dunkirk, the fall of Tobruk, and of Singapore, made victory seem unattainable, yet after El Alamein, and with the entry of the Soviet Union, and the US on our side, we won through. We could not have done so without these mighty allies, but they could not have won had we gone down in 1940, as American aid to Russia would not have been possible without the British Isles in allied hands. Given the almost unlimited potential of America she would probably have survived but would have then had to live in a world dominated by fascists.

Mr Cooper’s claim that the brainwashing of youngsters in our schools does not exist is just plain wrong, as is evidenced by the nonsense being fed to the latter about Britain’s almost uniquely malign past, while ignoring all the good that she has done, including the suppression of the slave trade, and spreading the ideals of democracy around the world.

As far as A. Parsons is concerned, he may find the Thought Police of the woke, the environment extremists’ desire that we should freeze or starve in order to reduce emissions and the growing threat from the totalitarian states to be amusing, but I doubt that this emotion will be shared by the victims if the worst should happen.

Colin Bullen

Public sector managers are still necessary

Colin Bullen’s letter concerning university expansion, the civil service and the NHS contains a number of serious inaccuracies.

In the case of universities, their expansion pre dates Tony Blair’s administration. The Robins report in the sixties led to the creation of new universities such as Kent and Sussex. John Major, post-1992, oversaw a huge university expansion when all existing polytechnics became universities. This policy continued under the present government with 10 specialist universities created since 2010. Mr Bullen refers to universities providing tertiary education; this term general applies to further and higher education institutions such as Kent College, they are not universities.

Civil service numbers in fact fell under the current government, however 50,000 extra posts had to be created since 2016 due to Brexit! The NHS recruits staff such as nurses now graduate-only entrance. By and large, most management in the NHS is delivered by qualified staff, for example bed management, a vital service is likely to be carried out by a senior nurse.

Mr Bullen’s comments about HRM departments are simply obtuse. All major public and private sector organisations have HRM departments. The NHS currently has a vacancy rate of 10% or 133,000 jobs, agency staff cost £3 billion a year to meet this shortfall. The NHS has a massive task of recruitment, training, deployment and career progression.

How on earth would it do this without the HRM function and workforce plan?

Steve Tasker