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.

Support shops if you want to keep them

People will mourn the loss of shops in our high streets when the shutters go down and they cease to trade.

This is due, in no small part, to the fall in the number of consumers who utilise them and which shopkeepers are dependent on to sustain their business.

According to a recent report, the amount of shoppers heading to the high streets, retail parks and shopping centres has fallen by 10% in the last seven years.

Local shops are the heart and soul of communities and provide a bedrock to propagate and nurture investment in the bricks and mortar of retail stores.

However, high business rates together with soaring energy prices and inflation, are significant factors in driving small independent shops to close.

This situation follows in the wake of the pandemic which buffeted retailers as they had their livelihood interrupted by the imposition of lockdowns. The coronavirus also drove more people to shop online and the switch for many has become permanent.

The outlook for the high street appears to be far from rosy, given that people are having to budget the amount they spend as a result of the cost-of-living crisis.

Michael Smith

Council jumping the gun with tip closures

I was horrified to see the proposal by the county council to close amenity tips in Kent.

The council seems to be claiming that the use of the tips has reduced but this is due, I believe, to the recent decision to charge for the deposit of domestic refuse resulting from DIY and soil and rubble arising from gardening; the need to book an appointment before taking rubbish to the tip and proscribing the type of vehicle that is used to bring rubbish to the tip.

All three have undoubtedly contributed to a decrease in the use of the tips and an increase in fly-tipping.

The provision of refuse dumps was included in the Civic Amenities Act 1967.

This provision has been re-enacted in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 in almost identical wording and provides that tips shall be provided free of charge; be reasonably accessible to persons resident in its area and are available for the deposit of waste at all reasonable times.

The county council’s proposals appear not to be complying with the Act and it has no powers to charge for the deposit of refuse that has not resulted in the course of a business, to proscribe the type of vehicle depositing the refuse or regulate in any way the times of the deposits other than that they should be reasonable.

The Secretary of State has powers, after holding a public inquiry, to make an Order requiring a county council to provide an amenity tip in accordance with the law.

DEFRA held a consultation on the future of Amenity tips last year and the results are due to be published shortly. It seems that Kent County Council has jumped the gun.

I am very keen that they should be operated in accordance with the law and request that the County abandon their ill-considered proposals.

Andrew Osborne BEM

Move will lead to rise in rubbish dumping

Surely one of the most idiotic ideas Kent County Council has is to close rubbish tips.

As people become more used to the fact that the pandemic is over, I am sure they would start to re-use these important facilities.

Closing them will just encourage more irresponsible people to dump their rubbish illegally on private farmland or public areas, increasing the eyesores that ruin rural areas.

There must be other means of saving money in the KCC budget that will not have such a disastrous effect on the environment.

Richard Palmer

Recycling waste isn’t easy

The tip closures are hardly surprising when you consider how hard it is to use them to dump your rubbish.

It’s like Fort Knox, and that holds the USA gold reserves, compared to our rubbish. It’s hardly a wonder it is losing our money.

We must remember they are meant to work on our behalf and recycling is meant to be an important issue.

When they should be getting people to recycle, all they have achieved is illicit dumping of rubbish and we pay the bill to remove. If so, where is the saving on this?

Where does this recycled rubbish go to, we are never told about what appens to it, well, much of it is sent abroad in containers to be processed?

Stephen Bennett

Politicians taking us back to the 1970s

Many of those, such as myself, who lived and worked through the 1970s, must feel that they are experiencing a time warp. We endured sky high inflation, widespread union militancy, failure in many services, and an incompetent political class.

The major lesson so painfully learnt, and only confronted when Margaret Thatcher became PM, was that the cause of inflation is a nation printing money that exceeds that which it obtains in income, thus devaluing the currency, and causing the price of everything to rise. One would have thought that the failure of wage and price controls attempted in that decade would have made clear that one cannot tame inflation by attacking the symptoms. But now, in 2023, the government is pretending that asking supermarkets to cap prices will succeed.

Edward Heath belonged to that section of the Conservative party which, while neglecting the interests of the country, and lacking true patriotism, were, and are, determined to blame the trade unions for all the ills of the economy, ignoring the fact that it was usually inefficient managements, and selfish employers, who brought so much of industry low. Today we see companies, determined to get the most for the least, supporting almost unlimited immigration for workers, rather than investing in a future based on the training of our own people.

The horrors of the three day week, and later the winter of discontent, were largely due to the inept way the government imposed idiotic policies which solved nothing, but provoked an inevitable reaction from those enduring rising costs, rising taxation, and general disruption. The more ideological trade union leaders were treated with kid gloves, until Mrs Thatcher introduced reforms which curbed Marxist and like-minded agitators, while allowing reasonable representatives of the workers to take back control of their organisations. As we watch the constant strikes taking place today, frequently led by those with a very political agenda, it seems as if we shall soon be back in the days of beer and sandwiches at number 10.

Despite the fact that all the lies told by the Europhiles from Heath downwards have been exposed, as the EU continues its doomed attempt to suppress the nation states of Europe, the spirit of those days lives on, the Remainers enthusiastically seeking to reverse any attempt to honour the expressed will of the people.

Why on earth have the political class forgotten all that we endured during that deplorable decade, and are now subjecting us to a rerun?

Colin Bullen

Offer solutions instead of just complaining

I notice that Robert Boston is at it again; talking this country down and bemoaning Brexit.

It has long been his regular boring mantra so I was inclined to ignore it, until I read his last paragraph where he claimed he would be spending his time ‘sniggering’ at the ‘Brexit big beasts periodically grumbling.’ Such insulting arrogance is nauseating.

He continually spends his time moaning about Brexit and the state of the country, but not once has he offered up an opinion as to what he thinks could be done to improve matters.

Readers know that he remains opposed to Brexit (heavens, he’s told us enough times already!) but he never commits to saying if he thinks the UK should be seeking to rejoin the EU, or even just the Customs Union /Single Market.

If he is prepared to say he believes in such a course, perhaps he would also give his view on what he thinks it might cost the UK financially and what it might have to sacrifice in order to do so.

I shall not be holding my breath, because it seems to me he is self-satisfied with spending the rest of his life sniggering and saying don’t blame me, I voted to remain and I shall continue to complain but not offer up any solutions.

C. Aichgy

Paying the price for Brexit con

A lot of us said right from the start that Brexit would not benefit Britain in any way and so it has proved.

Colin Bullen takes his usual wide-ranging swipes at a range of familiar targets he thinks have been responsible for the Brexit disaster but he does not name a single workable policy which might have been implemented to ensure its success.

The seven years since the referendum have shown that no such policies ever realistically existed.

He bemoans the fact that since the referendum in 2016, successive Conservative administrations have not been 'determined' enough to put pro-Brexit policies in place, conveniently forgetting that the closest we got to that position were the attempts last autumn by Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to push their right-wing economic agenda - and look at what immediately happened to the British economy as a result.

Brexit was supposed to bring prosperity for all, control of immigration, more money for the National Health Service and a lot else besides.

Now the British public have given up hope of seeing any of these promised benefits and advantages.

Judging by recent opinion polls, including from previously solid pro-Brexit areas, the majority of the population have realised that the whole project was a 'con' right from the start.

We are now all paying the price for this massive self-inflicted damage and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Ken Chapman

Voters duped into leaving imperfect EU

Colin Bullen complains about Brexit being “betrayed”, as if this wasn’t the Brexit he voted for, yet we had just about the hardest Brexit possible short of no deal and I seem to remember him singing the praises of disgraced former PM Johnson despite the latter’s appalling behaviour in office.

When will Mr Bullen finally realise that he was duped? Duped into believing that the blame for the UK’s problems lay in Brussels, when in fact it was Westminster governments that were to a very great extent responsible for the mess we were and are in.

Duped into voting for a policy that is not only hugely damaging to our economy but that further enriches and empowers a tiny elite at the expense of the vast majority of British citizens.

We are becoming, slowly but surely, financially and culturally poorer as a result of Brexit.

Perhaps Mr Bullen was swept along by the jingoism of the Vote Leave campaign. Perhaps he believed that we could return to some rose-tinted past that never existed.

Perhaps he shut his eyes, covered his ears and shouted ‘Project Fear’ at anyone pointing out the many discrepancies and untruths in Vote Leave’s arguments. Perhaps that is why he is now feeling betrayed.

The criticisms levelled at the EU were not entirely unjustified or unreasonable - it is undoubtedly far from perfect, and needs reform.

However, there are tangible and valuable benefits to membership which we have now sadly lost for the foreseeable future.

R. Emans

Spell out claims of catastrophe

Two letters last week refer to "the climate emergency", "the climate catastrophe", "the deadly consequences of inaction by governments" and so on.

Could the letter writers spell out in simple language what actually happens at +1.5 degrees or +2 degrees? This would make the scary language more understandable.

I am also confused by the contributors' use of the word "facts". The only facts are from history. The climate catastrophe must be the result of forecasts. Forecasts are not facts. Forecasts can be right or wrong, as in forecast Covid deaths, etc. A simple explanation would help.

David Northcroft