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

Spare us road chaos every school holiday

I recently heard that once again, National Highways are causing havoc for the people of Kent by implementing Operation Brock in time for ‘the Easter rush’. What rush?

Not only is it a waste of taxpayers’ money, it causes nothing but grief for those around the area. Why do National Highways feel the need to erect and run this nightmare during every school holiday?

It is never used for its intended purpose, always empty, and always workers sitting there getting paid to do nothing while it’s in operation!

It also becomes more of an issue for those HGVs heading to mainland Europe as they are instructed to use only the M20 back as far as Essex, and will face being turned around if they use the A2/M2.

Many people living in Kent visit Europe during school holidays, so with Eurostar no longer being available from Ashford, it causes an increasingly busy M20 as they now have to travel to London to catch the Eurostar.

If these trains were reinstated, not only would this take those additional cars off the road, it would improve our carbon footprint.

There are a huge amount of houses that have now been or are being built between Ashford and Maidstone. More houses equals more vehicles.

When the M20 is suddenly closed due to an accident, all these additional vehicles will cause gridlocked roads creating a whole mess of problems for those road users.

Operation Brock between Junctions 8-9 was never going to work or be useful to anyone so why, when they know the only responsible thing to do is build a new road linking these two areas, are National Highways continuing to waste the taxpayers’ money every school holiday?

Brian Marchant

Motorway plan is best we’ve got

Love or hate it, I think Operation Brock on the M20 actually regulates the increased traffic flows very well.

Before Brock was refined to what it is today, the villages and country lanes were in total meltdown, lorries and cars trying to find a way around the gridlocked M20 made life hell for locals going about their daily business. Satnavs have a lot to answer for!

For as long as Kent remains the gateway for Europe, Brock will remain in one form or another.

Politicians note: Lorry parks are not the answer to the problem, you have already concreted over and blighted too much of the Kent countryside, I just wonder what the local elections will bring to the argument.

Diane and John Dunton

Tide is turning against the woke fanatics

It was sad to see the woke extremism in the article by Melissa Todd last week, trotting out the usual tired cliches and worn-out slogans of the hard left.

As usual, their idea of "inclusiveness" specifically and aggressively excludes the opinions of anyone who disagrees with their hate-based, extremist agenda.

Respectable people who believe in freedom of speech are viciously attacked by hard left propagandists in the media and public services, who are bent on silencing any opposing voices.

This applies - as we are seeing - especially to the BBC, the NHS, and sadly the leftists have infiltrated the police themselves.

There are an increasing number of legal cases highlighted in the press defending ordinary, decent teachers, nurses and others who have been hatefully attacked for simply stating a perfectly valid, reasonable and widely held opinion that the hard left bigots want to silence.

Usually, these are based on the notion that some poor little woke fanatic has been "offended" by someone daring to hold a contrary opinion.

No wonder there is such a surge of support for Trump and his anti-woke campaign in the USA. Thank God we are also seeing a growing fight back against this sick insanity in Europe and the UK.

Many businesses who have previously supported and promoted the woke agenda are now revising their ideas and withdrawing funding, as they realise that their customers are actively rejecting their services. The tide is turning!

Of course, people have the right to hold whatever opinions they choose but absolutely do not have the right to demand or to force other people to agree with them.

Jim Wright

Dangers of scrapping diversity measures

In her article headlined: ‘I fear where the US leads, Britain follows’, Melissa Todd focused on President Trump’s attack on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) in the USA and the steps he is taking to eliminate them from public life on the grounds that they represent threats to American values.

Her fear was that where Trump treads today, a future British government could well follow tomorrow. She fears for the future from what she loosely calls ‘the right’.

Those of us who still support the liberal values which underpin our parliamentary democracy would certainly share Melissa Todd’s unease about their future in Britain. However, although she argues that we must face the threat to DEI head-on she is nonspecific about who or what we should combat.

In this, I suggest that she look no further than Reform UK and its parliamentary leader, Nigel Farage who recently addressed journalists on the issue of President Trump scrapping DEI in American workplaces.

Here in Britain, he criticised what he called “the lunacies” of DEI policies.

With 200,000 members and four MPs, Reform UK is still in its infancy as a political party, but it is looking to make gains in the forthcoming local government elections and beyond that, in the next general election.

Jumping on the culture war bandwagon could well be an easy way to generate votes. It isn’t members of the public who should face the threat to DEI head-on but the existing, traditional political parties.

They should wake up and do it as quickly as possible, otherwise we could well be following in Donald Trump’s footsteps. After all, the elimination of DEI in Britain could be the thin end of a nasty, illiberal wedge.

John Cooper

Divisions created by our system

It was good to read the letter from Max Hess outlining the positive aspects of socialism/communism.

We are living in dangerous and difficult times with the threat of economic collapse adding to the dangers of climate change and nuclear war.

The letter stresses the positive aspects of what we should be aiming for: Democracy so that ordinary people are in control of their own lives; factories, transport, banks, health services and education all belonging to the people; people working together to produce the things that people need; lives which are secure so that no one need fear what tomorrow will bring.

How much better than a society in which individuals like Trump, Putin and Netanyahu can daily bring misery to the lives of millions of people.

Our rulers maintain their power by creating division amongst us: Black v White; Men v Women; Old v Young. Any kind of difference is exploited rather than celebrated.

Modern society is collapsing around us. Caring for other people becomes impossible because the system decrees that nothing can be done that affects the profits of the ruling elite.

We will not survive as humans unless we work towards a society in which the good of all is the driving force of all that we do.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

How many workers does it take to fill a pothole?

It's election time again and every party's candidates are promising action to fix potholes; forgive my cynicism but haven't we heard this before?

The problem seems to be that fixing potholes is expensive and the more there are, the more expensive they get to fix.

Maybe the problem is the bureaucracy, a pothole doesn't officially exist unless a member of the public reports it, a council official then has to visit the pothole and judge that it meets the depth or size criteria for fixing, he or she then draws a white square around it.

In the fullness of time a contractor turns up, erects traffic lights, puts out bollards and eventually fills the pothole, all of which takes half a day. Presumably at some point, some filled potholes are visited by a council official to ensure quality control?

And don't forget the paperwork the contractor has had to fill in the get the contract; he's had to prove he's up to date and compliant with all the latest employment legislation, modern slavery act, equalities act, all that kind of stuff.

I once told a local authority I wouldn't bother bidding for a job from them as there was too much paperwork, they simply said add the time in to the contract!

Back in the "good old days" a council surveyor was responsible for his patch, spotted potholes and whistled up two men with a lorryload of cold tarmac who filled the hole tamped it down and went off to the next one.

Bureaucracy was at a minimum, of course we could not be sure the public was getting value for money and the health and safety of the pothole fillers had to come first - hence the traffic lights, so everything got more complex and bureaucratic and eventually cost more than if the two men in the lorry with the tarmac had been on the fiddle a bit.

Perhaps the next time someone offers to tarmac a councillors’ drive because "we've been working round the corner and have a bit left over", we could simply ask them to pop out and fill some potholes, take a photo of each and bung them a few quid for each one done.

Yes, it would be open to abuse but I can't believe that even allowing for that it could be more expensive.

Bob Britnell

Today’s world mirrors Orwell’s fiction

Over the years I have often referred to Orwell’s classic novel 1984, as he so accurately forecast such horrors as the Thought Police, the corruption of the language via Newspeak, and the mutability of the past becoming the means to suppress truth.

Now the world appears to be becoming that described in the book, where it is divided between Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia. Who can doubt that we are seeing these replicated as America, Russia and China, all led by authoritarian regimes.

If this is indeed the future reality, then those nations such as the UK must abandon the current alliances with the US and join together to create a sufficiently strong military to defend their freedom.

This is a tragedy but the alternative is to bow the knee to the sort of ignorant louts who have taken power in Washington and are set on betraying all that we hold dear.

Colin Bullen

Why drag us into this war?

Instead of keeping calm and calling for peace, the political class is doing the exact opposite - whipping up hysteria and preparing everyone for World War Three.

Not content with killing off OAPs and the disabled through benefit cuts, they want to kill young kids by conscripting them to fight their wars as well.

Ukraine is not a UK responsibility, it's a territorial spat between two sovereign states that has nothing to do with us. No threat to UK.

Nations only go to war when their very existence is at stake. So there is nothing to justify depriving children of their fathers or mothers of their sons.

John Helm