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

Ticket offices at stations are essential

I’m appalled that the government and rail industry have formally announced plans to close almost 1,000 ticket offices at stations across the country.

I care about ticket offices because in 2020, I had to lift my powerchair off of the train, as no staff were there to help me. This of course was painful and stressful and fellow passengers were horrified. I had booked assistance but no one was available to help.

Ticket offices are essential. If they are closed, it will be devastating for disabled people, the elderly, people with learning difficulties and many more people who rely on being able to speak to someone at a station in order to be able to get around.

Staff at stations are crucial for access to information, to waiting rooms, to facilities – and losing them will have a big impact on safety.

Despite the massive implications for passengers, the rail companies and the government are ploughing ahead.

I support the rail strikes, and I believe that ticket offices and station staffing need to be protected. I encourage everyone to respond to the consultations and hope that the government will see sense.

Phoebe Maria

Allow migrants to work sooner

Most of those arriving in small boats turn out to be genuine refugees once they are assessed. They cannot apply in their own war-torn or politically hostile countries without death threats so have no way of saving their skins other than via small boats.

We put them up in hotels or camps because we cannot process their status quickly. At the same time we refuse to allow them to work.

Yet we have a desperate need for people to fill jobs particularly in the care and agriculture sectors. Employers are having to seek staff from overseas to fill these jobs many of which are unskilled. This, of course, swells the immigration figures. Meanwhile, many of those arriving in small boats could do these jobs. Indeed many have skills in other sectors which we could use.

If we allowed people to work while their status is assessed they would not be holed up in completely unsuitable expensive accommodation. Instead they would be economically active and be contributing to our economy rather than being a drain on it.

To suggest we send them to Rwanda or isolate them on barges out at sea is not only inhumane; it is economically stupid. This is not a plea to 'open the floodgates' but a plea for logic and common sense.

Nick Eden-Green

Safe routes needed for refugees

Mr S.C. Anning took issue with my letter about immigration in which I mentioned that an international survey had shown that out of 29 countries, British people, in terms of attitude, were the third most enthusiastic towards refugees.

By ‘refugees’ I was using the standard definition of those fleeing to Britain to escape from war or persecution in their own country. I am proud of the fact that we have taken 20,000 Syrians, 21,000 Afghans and most recently, 178,000 Ukrainians.

Germany has taken respectively, from those countries, one million, 286,000 and over one million. Those refugees we did take were processed via safe and legal routes to Britain.

Those who come to Britain today seeking asylum are, because of the clampdown on immigration, forced to use unsafe and illegal routes, travelling either in the backs of lorries or in unsafe boats.

It is quite clear from his letter that Mr Anning has confused the genuine refugees I was referring to with those asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats who might be classified as economic migrants. Their subsequent accommodation cost in this country is why he wants, as he says: “The crossings to be stopped, and right now”.

He ends his letter by asking me: “When are you going to say enough is enough, John Cooper?” Well, I can tell Mr Anning that I am not saying that, but rather, recognising the complexity of the immigration issue.

I am going to ask the government when it is going to make it easier for asylum seekers, who are genuine refugees, to come to Britain by opening up legal channels, rather than forcing them to risk their lives and those of their children, crossing our dangerous Channel in small and unsafe boats?

John Cooper

Controlled migration only way to sustain our democracy

Since when have judges and the House of Lords, all unelected bodies, had the right to overturn the wishes of the people on spurious, flimsy and unsubstantiated belief that migrants sent to Rwanda ‘will be returned to their home countries where they have faced persecution or other inhumane treatment’.

This is nothing but a red herring being bandied about by charities who are telling migrants what they have to say and go about avoiding deportation. It would appear that the mostly single young men applying for asylum are quite happy to leave their families to suffer ‘persecution and inhumane treatment’.

Charities are using this as a political means to unseat a democratically elected government, as indeed is the House of Lords.

The European Convention of Human Rights and the Refugee Convention, founded in 1951 was designed to help those after the Second World War, and has no place in today’s society.

Those involved with this legal challenge to the government’s wishes are unelected individuals and set themselves against the express will of the British people for controlled migration, which is the only way to sustain our democracy.

If our way of life and our social standings are not to be undermined and devalued then it’s essential that Britain withdraws forthwith from the noxious ECHR before it ruins our country. If the Tories fail to do this they are unlikely to win another election in the foreseeable future.

Mr S. C. Anning

Most voters are left wing

Colin Bullen claims populists speak for the ‘uncool’ majority but is he aware that poll after poll reveal that the majority of the voting public support left-leaning parties, ie: Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, etc?

He also makes the absurd claim, without producing a shred of evidence, that One Nation Tories, who sensibly seek closer ties with our principal trading partner, the EU, wish to see this country become no more than a province in a single EU state.

Bill Ridley

Do inquiries teach us anything?

Inquiries like the Covid one currently in progress are meant to elicit lessons to be learned.

But history often repeats itself and it seems, we learn nothing from the mistakes or ill-judgements that we made then.

And similarly, the same applies to events that come under scrutiny in inquiries. No matter how noble or pragmatic their intentions, the remedy is rarely instigated or acted upon.

The long and short of it is that inquiries themselves should be open to question.

M Smith