From Brexit growth to foreign aid, our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent in their letters to the editor...

Who got us into this awful mess?

Not long ago we were promised control over our borders.

Is it not ironic then that the Border Force are to go on strike?

Years of cutbacks are now looking as if someone in government doesn’t understand ‘joined-up thinking’.

To make things worse we are told the Army will help out; the same Army which has seen reductions for years.

Kent's Maidstone barracks is to close in 2027.

And then we are told the police will likewise help out (ambulances and nursing initially). Surely people do not have such short memories to overlook the egregious cuts across all areas of policing?

The recent recruitment drive cannot return experience, nor can it return closed stations. Further some of the individuals recruited since the cutbacks are at best ineffectual.

So I ask the government: “Who is going to help out the people helping out the people who are helping out during strikes?"

Leads one to think that maybe our problems are not down to foreigners, but incompetent governance.

Robert Boston

Remember true Xmas reason

It comes as no surprise that fewer people are registering as Christian on the latest Census, after reading the letters in the last edition. Yes, Alan Watling, you are missing something, it’s the fact that many countries around the world have taken on larger numbers of asylum seekers than the UK and we should take in our fair share, as we agreed when signing up to the United Nations’ refugee convention in 1951.

It would also seem some writers have lost the plot and the thinking of some will only lead to more undemocratic actions similar to the assault on the US Capitol and recent activity in Germany.

However, it is the season of goodwill and we can only hope that peace will reign and more people will remember the birth of Jesus Christ and his subsequent teachings at this time of year and the real reason for celebrating Christmas.

Mike Coomber

Millions spent on countries

People over the centuries have worked hard to make Britain what it is.

These things didn’t just happen by chance.

We were once a poor country ourselves but we put our ingenuity and skills to good use, by building the modern industrial nation we are today in order to give our children a good start in life.

But our social standing and way of life is being undermined by mass immigration.

The thousands of mainly young men descending on our shores have deserted not only their own families but their country also.

This is forcing more poverty and lack of opportunities for their own people. Many have come to our shores for ‘quick’ money.

Millions of pounds have been given to the poor countries from which most come, to help them with such basic things as water and medicines.

But the powers that be in many of these countries squander our money either on themselves, or on arms, while their people starve.

I do not blame people for making a better life for themselves but we are overloading our infrastructure and making this country poorer, as well as depriving the population of housing, education and medicine.

This is causing resentment and has to stop, right now, before the social unrest it will cause.

Mr S C Anning

Growth needs to be chased

My take on this is as follows: for more than 40 years from the late ‘60s onwards, I worked across Europe for a multinational which manufactured consumer products, from France across to Russia.

I lived and worked in Germany. I worked in the heady days of 7% per annum growth in Poland and the Czech Republic after the USSR collapsed and before they joined the wall of regulations imposed by the EU.

But if I lived between the Pyrenees and the Urals, I would not want armies to come across and destroy everything.

This is their history. It is not our UK history.

It explains why they put up with the European Commission, the least bad option for sorting out their differences.

But the commission is not accountable.

'Boris Johnson and Liz Trust (and many others), could see stronger growth outside the EU was possible...'

It is not elected. So big organisations, especially companies, use their weight to protect their existing positions through influencing EU regulation.

Entrepreneurs are frozen out. Decision-making is corrupted. Growth is slow. Most other countries get wealthier much faster. The EU becomes irrelevant.

Arising out of their various experiences, Boris Johnson and Liz Trust (and many others), could see stronger growth outside the EU was possible, but only after leaving.

Unfortunately Boris was incapable of following through on the nuts and bolts of Brexit and Liz Truss tried to promote growth through the tax-cutting mini-budget, without first selling it to the markets and to the commentariat.

For growth is the only way to lift the whole of society. It must be pursued, whoever is in charge.

David Northcroft

Beware rise of the machines

I think we all understood the challenges Covid presented, not least those who had to make trips to the shops.

Are we now in a post-Covid world, where retailers are keen to move to a permanent model of fewer staff and more technology?

Self-checkout in shops is not new but growth in this technology is huge. In 2013, there were 191,000 machines in the UK; in 2019 there were 325,000 and now there’s probably around 500,000. The retail industry sells this as the new ‘shopping experience’ but there is such a thing as a bad experience. Many people do prefer to use self-checkout when they shop so banning their use is not a sensible option. But the key point is that a shopper chooses to use them, choice being the operative word, because they can interact with a real person at the checkout. Supermarkets now rely heavily on self-checkouts and are reducing checkout staff. Self-checkouts are not so good if you have a trolley full of shopping where the transfer from trolley, scanning and getting it all back in the trolley in a confined space is not fun.

Throw in a few problems like bottles of booze and missing barcodes in your shop and then the ‘shopping experience’ is not too positive. If you really want to test your customer base maybe go for the full fat option of being technically exclusive – like B&Q.

What can be more fun than wheeling a heavy trolley full of timber and tiles up to the self-checkout, trying to scan, only to find that a barcode is missing or the glue you picked up is subject to an age check.

No human, no choice.

Peter Bressington

Wake up to cold reality of life

Your correspondent Ralph A Tebbutt is living in cloud cuckoo land if he really believes car ownership could be replaced by public transport.

It might be possible in central London, but anyone living in small villages and hamlets in rural areas would effectively be trapped in their houses – those unable to walk far being rendered housebound. He also shows his ignorance when he claims the UK is somehow more to blame than other nations for the atmospheric pollution he decries.

The fact is in the last decade China alone has emitted more carbon dioxide than we have since the beginning of the industrial revolution. In any case, none of this is relevant, given that to blame climate change on humanity is incorrect, as it is actually due to natural processes over which we have no control. It was easy for people to approve the activists, the Sebastians and Sophias of Extinction Rebellion, when the heating worked, and the weather was temperate, but as we plunge into what may very well be a long, hard winter, this approval will vanish like the morning dew.

Unless the political elite wake up to the reality they will find themselves swept away by a tide of opposition from those who would rather be warm than bask in the self-righteousness the former seems to regard as so virtuous.

Colin Bullen

Times getting tougher for us

For people concerned about the high cost of heating their homes, there is some respite in the form of ‘warm hubs’.

Community centres, libraries, churches and even banks are opening their doors to offset the anguish of people having to choose between eating and heating.

Libraries will provide visitors the use of computers, books to read and games to play.

Community centres offer hot drinks, financial advice and succour for those who seek company.

However, there is also the rise in food prices to contend with, which has hit a record 12.4% for the year to November according to the British Retail Consortium.

The soaring price of energy, animal feed and transport are behind the increase.

Families are expecting to cut down on how much they buy, especially over the Christmas period.

Michael Smith

Act before it's much too late

By licensing a new coal mine last week, the Conservative government has committed possibly its worst climate crime yet.

If we are to have any chance of a future, we have to stop opening up new sources of fossil fuels and make a rapid transition to renewables accompanied by a significant reduction in our energy use.

COP27 a few weeks ago demonstrated just how little leadership there is globally but with the UK a member of the G7 and as one of the biggest economies in the world, it is essential that we, and other large economies, provide leadership.

Sadly that leadership is completely lacking in our government.

Despite the science-denying ramblings of some in these letters pages, climate change is real and is already killing people in huge numbers.

Without a significant transformation of the way we live, the future looks bleak for us and impossible for future generations.

Cllr Stuart Jeffery

Green Party

Santa has some major problems

With a raft of strikes set to hit festive travel, thank goodness Santa Claus isn't reliant on planes, trains, or automobiles.

Santa's exemption from immigration and customs controls, means that Border Force strikes will not impact on his national and international travel plans.

There are, however, concerns this year about Father Christmas's health.

The increased workload, due to the ongoing postal strike, coupled with the yearly pressure of intense seasonal expectation is a worry.

St Nicholas isn't getting any younger.

And an icy slip, trip, or fall at the North Pole in the build-up to Christmas will not guarantee a timely response from an emergency paramedic.

Delayed care, and potential complications due to his elevated BMI, could result in Santa being in bed on Christmas Eve.

What would we then say to the children?

Gary Freestone