From fly-tipping to government rhetoric, 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.

Litter problem in our county is a disgrace

My wife and I travel around Kent a lot and more and more we are in despair at the amount of litter, fly tipping and potholes everywhere.

Most of the litter seems to be takeaway food cartons and bottles, while recent trimming of hedgerows and verges only makes it stand out even more.

Villages seem to employ small teams to keep things under control, but outside of these areas, nothing is being done and Kent has become an absolute disgrace.

We speak to friends and relatives in other parts of the country and they are amazed at how bad things are here, because their local roads are regularly cleared of rubbish and potholes are filled properly – often with whole stretches resurfaced instead of the patches that soon break up again here.

Is anybody taking responsibility for Kent’s public image?

The former Garden of England now seems little more than the National Rubbish Dump and the county is fast becoming an embarrassment.

At the very least, drive-through takeaways should be reminding people to dispose on their rubbish properly, while an actual levy on these establishments, to help pay for clearing up the mess they inadvertently create, would not go amiss either.

David Holman

Beware ongoing nasty rhetoric

Totalitarian one-party states are regimes where those in power control the state broadcaster and public discourse.

In functional democracies, a party with temporary political power does not control a publicly owned state broadcaster by making party political appointments.

In a functional democracy, a publicly owned organisation does not prevent public figures from commenting in moderate language on public issues. As a law-abiding citizen, it sends a chill down my spine when I hear a Prime Minister and other ministers, in my country, in the 21st century, using inflammatory language attacking lawyers (lefty or righty or supportive of international laws on human rights).

Any politician using language to incite law-breaking, (by attacking and dehumanizing lawyers or asylum seekers or voluntary services or anyone) lays themselves open to prosecution, and they should also be judged at the ballot-box.

As recently as September 2020, there was a violent attack on a lawyer after a previous Conservative Home Secretary shouted about lawyers in the media.

There is a foreseeable risk when language is used to divide and attack the rule of law. On October 12 2020 the chair of the Bar council in the Law Gazette said: “There should never be a situation when a British prime minister, home secretary and other government ministers need to be called upon to stop deliberately inflammatory language towards a profession simply doing its job in the public interest. Shockingly, we’ve arrived at that point.”

However worried about electoral losses a party may be, it should never stoop to using scare tactics prevalent 90 years ago.

Armed service members of my family, who often told me of their experiences 80 years ago in a Europe full of displaced persons, who spent decades picking up the pieces after arrogant, monied, politicians postured, would feel so betrayed by the behaviour of current Conservative government ministers.

Sarah Waite-Gleave

Unelected elite shows contempt

In recent years our democracy has come to be treated with contempt by an unelected establishment comprised of public servants, both centrally in the Civil Service, and in local councils, plus a vast number in, inter alia, the bureaucracies of the NHS, education and the law.

They are accorded a mouthpiece in the BBC and have extended their tentacles into large numbers of companies, whose management have yielded to the demands of these arrogant authoritarians.

The most vocal are those who live in privileged enclaves, such as the prosperous suburbs of North London, although their influence can be seen in the mindset displayed by the most obstreperous elements of obsessives on social media.

The determination to pursue a target of non-zero carbon is unwarranted, while decent people enduring life in areas with high crime rates see excuses made for the criminals, and deterrent sentences obstructed, by those who are unlikely to be victims.

It is clear that the Civil Service, supposedly existing to aid ministers implement the policies voted for by the people, now arrogate to themselves the right to impede such implementation, no more egregiously than on their efforts to frustrate Brexit.

While in many cases this does not reflect a widespread conspiracy it is obvious that the paradigm to which these people subscribe is one which has only contempt for the ordinary citizens, particularly the working class.

Their urge to virtue signal leads them to support every supposed victim of discrimination, however unjustified their complaints may be. While they express sympathy for those fleeing, via boats on the Channel, that apparent hotbed of danger, France, they ignore the large number of youngsters in deprived areas whose unsuccessful efforts to find jobs, or decent accommodation are further undermined by this constant stream of arrivals.

With a few exceptions the political elite do little or nothing to oppose all this and, unless the people cease to be apathetic, and demand that action is taken, the downward spiral into a future dominated by the agenda of a patronising and disdainful few will only accelerate.

Colin Bullen

Spend money on roads, not French failure

So the British government is going to give £500 million to an already rich country, France, to pay for French incompetence in failing to stop immigrants leaving France.

I’ve never given our politicians credit for much intelligence but this takes the biscuit.

£500 million could be better spent on repairing our roads, the roads in my part of Kent look more like abandoned Roman roads than a modern highway, with deep, dangerous potholes.

In 50 years of motoring, I’ve never seen our roads in such a bad state.

I recently drew the council’s attention to a local road junction where the surface and the white lining had gone, the repair looks more like a cheap slipshod patch up and no new white lines.

It’s about time time Rishi Sunak got his priorities right and started spending taxpayers’ money on the taxpayer and not on French indolence.

Brian J. Cooper

Poor will lose the vote again because of this

Of your two letters about voter ID to be used in future elections, the one by T. Jones, suggesting that opposition to the change was a lot of fuss about nothing lacked any evidence.

The second by Mark Kirby was well-reasoned and I agree, that the evidence is conclusive that it will disenfranchise a large number of voters.

However, his supposition that the change was a deliberate, underhand tactic by the government which will benefit them, rather than the Labour Party cannot be proved.

Also, it presupposes that the majority of disenfranchised voters would, if they did vote, vote Labour and we have no way of knowing that. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said that the majority of the 1.7 million voters who will be disenfranchised will be in the low income groups.

The foundation makes the point that for those men and women in this group, applying for a free of charge, voter card is unlikely to be a priority.

Particularly so, either if they are working in an insecure job with largely irregular, unpredictable and long hours or juggling multiple jobs to make ends meet while arranging caring responsibilities and health needs.

As to whether this change to voter ID is necessary, the Electoral Commission has said that, in relation to the 2019 elections, this country had low levels of proven fraud.

In that year, 595 cases of alleged fraud were investigated by the police and as a result four defendants were given a conviction and two were given a caution.

The majority of cases had nothing to do with voters using someone else’s vote, but were for candidates giving false information on a ballot paper and illegal tampering with ballot papers.

Whatever the Government’s motives for bringing in unnecessary voter ID, it is sad to reflect that the poor in society, who were denied a vote until the extension of the franchise in the 19th and early 20th centuries, are about to lose it again, by default, in 2023.

John Cooper

Flytippers need to be tackled

I have to write about the fly-tipping in and around Kent and especially in Horton Kirby near Dartford.

There is no excuse at all to fly-tip as whoever is doing it only has to pick up the phone and make an appointment at the Pepperhill tip.

These people are either too lazy to pick up the phone but are not lazy enough to dump in the village or along the roadside or do not care about the environment.

Would they like it if someone dumped rubbish outside their homes? I very much doubt it. I would like the fly-tippers to give their side of the story if they dare, as it costs nothing to go to the tip or is it just too much for them? Councils will always take mattresses away and furniture but of course the dumpers have to pay for it.

If they can afford petrol to dump the waste they can afford to go to the tip. I would like them to reply, it is a cowardly way to behave.

I do hope they are not the same people who protest about ‘extinction rebellion’ as it would be two-faced hypocrisy.

Stella J. Kemp

Staying home to see the sights

I really don’t see the attraction of travelling abroad, be it to broaden one’s horizon or to escape the English weather for warmer climates.

If I want to see the Sphinx or the Pyramids in Egypt, then rather hop on a plane and be saddled with the guilt of contributing to my carbon footprint, I can sit in relative comfort in front of my computer screen and see them in all their glory on a social media platform like YouTube.

Though, when I was much younger, I visited several countries in three continents, unaware of climate change or the detrimental effect it would have on the planet.

And the prospect of people having use of a computer in their homes, was the stuff of science fiction!

Now, I’d only consider roaming beyond these shores if I had the address of Shangri-La!

Sadly, it’s the one place Google can’t provide me with its location.

M Smith

Lineker should speak for us

BBC TV presenter Gary Lineker says he’s speaking for people who have no voice.

Perhaps when he’s finished supporting criminals who collect £2,000/3,000 per person from people who want to enter England illegally, he will speak for me and thousands of others who have fought for years not to continue losing more and more departments from our hospital.

Betty Renz

Fears of more A20 crashes

After yet another serious accident on the A20 between Bearsted and the M20 link near the Great Danes, and bearing in mind the new Woodcuts industrial business park, surely the 60mph speed limit on this stretch now needs reviewing and reducing.

There is a history of fatalities and serious injury over the years on this relatively short stretch of road which has many adjoining industrial and commercial premises and a number of hazardous road junctions which regularly witness accidents.

A 60mph speed limit frankly is ridiculous as is obvious to those using this road most days of the week.

For example, a vehicle travelling at 60mph cannot be seen until it’s too late by someone exiting Caring Lane and turning right because of a hidden dip in the highway.

To exacerbate the problem, the new massive industrial park at Woodcuts will come into full time operation soon with literally hundreds of movements of heavy vehicles. These will slowly emerge close to a blind spot and encounter vehicles coming at them unsighted at up to 60mph over the brow of a hill.

I would be grateful if you could add the weight of the KM to resolve this matter with the Highways authority as soon a possible.Otherwise I’m afraid there will be many more serious accidents in the foreseeable future.

Rowland Little