From Channel crossings to the BBC, 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.

Safe routes will end crossings

Christopher Hudson-Gool asked last week where are the safe routes. Well, the only ones currently in operation are the limited Ukrainian, Afghan and Hong Kong versions.

Of the first, many have come, but due to this government’s bungling, more still remain waiting in Ukraine.

The Afghan one was largely limited to those who had helped the British, such as interpreters, and were thus at risk from the Taliban. Given that many others live in fear of that group now back in charge, they appear to have been abandoned to their fates. Of those from Hong Kong, over 72,000 have arrived.

Of the asylum seekers - leaving aside the mostly economic Albanian migrants - the vast majority who have to arrive by small boats, either across the Channel or the Mediterranean, actually are eligible for refugee status. Most other European countries already take a lot more than the UK.

'Migrants aren't the reason we're losing hospital wards. This and the lack of council housing, decimated industrial sector and misuse of migrants as cheap labour are the fault of all governments since Mrs Thatcher...'

Safe routes for asylum have been campaigned on for the last 20 years or so but no government has been willing to grasp the nettle, preferring to try to dissuade, usually for political gain. Right now the Tunisian government has started using the same dehumanising and derogatory language, following the likes of the UK and Italy.

The migrants are also not the reason we are losing hospital wards, as Betty Renz suggests, because this and the lack of decent council housing, a decimated industrial sector and the misuse of migrants as cheap labour are the fault of all governments since Mrs Thatcher, plus the last 13 years of Tory austerity.

Whether Labour would be able to set up proper safe routes and how many people may come are tough questions only a sorely-needed general election might answer.

Ray Duff

Cruel migrant policy should be criticised

Your columnist Robert Barman was wrong to dismiss the recent Gary Lineker affair as simply ‘overblown nonsense’, when it generated a national debate about impartiality in the media.

This started when the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, unveiled her plans to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats and in which she said the UK was being “overwhelmed”. Gary described it as an “immensely cruel policy, directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 1930s”.

Robert Barman missed the opportunity to point out that Gary’s detractors, who may approve of the immigration policy of which he disapproves, might well say why should they be required to pay, by law, the BBC’s compulsory licence fee which which pays his salary, when he gives voice to political views diametrically opposed to theirs? Gary’s defenders, on the other hand, would argue that his criticisms of government policy were not made on the BBC but on Twitter and his work on the BBC has nothing to with politics.

Robert Barman wrote: “Few people care what Gary Lineker thinks about immigration policy, beyond the handful of online zealots on the extremes of the debate”. I, and I would assume, many of your readers do respond to what Gary has said and, like me, are not any kind of ‘zealot’. In addition, we would also take issue with Robert Barman’s opinion that Gary, like other celebrities, has ‘an almost pathological need’ to share his opinions. To describe the calm, level-headed Gary Lineker as a person who has any kind of pathological need is ‘overblown nonsense’.

John Cooper

People must be put before profit

On a day when junior doctors were striking to safeguard their pay and working conditions, the Chancellor gave a massive boost to a small section (elderly doctors with large pension pots) whilst ignoring the issues that the junior doctors sought to raise.

One of the main problems face by workers in the caring profession (teachers, nurses, doctors, nursery assistants, social workers generally) is the need to recruit and retain workers. They are desperately understaffed.

Many who do join these professions find that the working conditions and wage levels are such that they cannot continue working at the job that they wish to make their career.

The answer is not to force, or bribe, those who have long worked in those professions to work past the time when they need to retire, relax and follow other interests (a right that should be available to everyone).

The answer is to so order the situation within those professions that all involved have a rewarding experience in every sense of that word.

It is quite right and acceptable for people to use whatever means (including strike action) to defend their professions and work situations in support of their own needs and of those who use and need the services that they provide.

The fault lies not with workers but with the economic system (putting profit before people) that dominates our lives.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

Rich hypocrites betray our working class

The furore over Gary Lineker’s comparison of the government’s policy to stop illegal immigration with the propaganda of the savages of the Nazi regime obfuscates important questions about the issue.

How can it be right that people who seem quite capable of paying large sums to criminals should be able to jump the queue ahead of those, escaping conflicts, or oppression, who have sought to use legitimate channels to claim asylum? Why are so many on the boats coming from Albania, a safe country, which is a candidate for membership of the EU, while fleeing from France, a first world democracy?

Given that the vast majority of those arriving are clearly young men, is it not obvious that they are economic migrants? Why is no consideration given to British people living in deprived areas, who cannot find jobs, homes or even GPs, yet are expected to accept almost unlimited numbers of those with no connection to this country competing for these things?

One vital question that the liberal elite refuse to answer is how many is too many, as there are literally tens of millions in the world whose desire to move to a first world country would be encouraged by open borders.

The surrender by the BBC confirms that in reality it is totally committed to the agenda promoted by those such as Lineker, while those who claim that this is all about free speech would soon change their tune if a fellow presenter, from a non-political BBC department, should post on social media, supporting the government’s policy and saying that it did not go far enough.

The vociferous advocates of allowing this scandal to continue are hypocrites, who, caring nothing for the working class, and living complacently in their prosperous enclaves, will not be paying the price of such a policy.

Colin Bullen

BBC right wing bias is overlooked

I read with interest Robert Barman’s article on Gary Lineker’s comments about the immigration bill debate and the reaction to it.

The claim that his opinion is only of interest to a “handful of online zealots on the extremes of the debate” is so obviously nonsense. Everybody - that is everybody - I know thinks he has done a wonderful job in calling out the government on this issue. Support for him is held by people way beyond those of us who try always to stop inhuman behaviour by the powers that be.

Next, he picks up on the reference comparing this government with the Nazis. This, as he says, has all too often been a cry from the Left totally over the top. However, sadly the comparison is increasingly becoming more and more sustainable. The reductions in the right to protest and to vote, the increase in the powers of the police, the removal of the court’s right to prevent the government from behaving illegally and the continual attacks on immigrants are familiar from Germany in the 1930s.

The impartiality of the BBC has been compromised for some time and not by Gary Lineker. The only thing he did “wrong” was to say something that the government didn’t like. Tendentious political right-wing comments by people like Andrew Neil or Michael Portillo are not so subject to scrutiny. The general dislike of Jeremy Corbyn is in no small part due to the way he was misrepresented by Laura Kuenssberg. And since Fiona Bruce took over Question Time, this has given more prominence to those on the right, bringing disgraceful people to the attention of the public.

It is very sad that people like Gary Lineker need to stand up. But this is due to the fact that the bulk of the press has consistently produced a wealth of misinformation about the important matters of state.

The result of this has been the disaster of Brexit, the elimination of decent people from the Tory party and a government of irresponsibility, corruption and incompetence.

Richard Cooper

Time to cancel the licence fee

Gary Lineker really wants a history lesson because if he thinks the Tory party are akin to the Nazis then he really has lost the plot.

What he fails to understand is that the BBC’s income comes from the TV licence fee and represents everyone, be they Tory, Labour or Liberal. It’s essential that the BBC remains impartial to people’s views and are simply ‘presenters’ and if you want to hear the public’s point of view then you invite pundits in to give a balanced view, as the viewing public do not want to listen to the likes of Gary Lineker giving his point of view. That is not what he is paid for. If he wishes to do that, then he gets a job outside of the BBC.

It would appear now that the BBC has gone soft on Lineker and no doubt will think he has got away with it, so it won’t be long before he makes another inane comment. It’s time I believe that the government cancels the licence fee and let it earn its own keep.

Finally, the current Conservative government was given a considerable mandate by the British people to sort out the awful pressures being placed on our social fabric, which is near to breaking point. The government are doing what they have been elected for.

Mr S. C. Anning

All kicking off over Lineker

Gary Lineker has caused a storm by his comment on Twitter comparing the government’s planned bill on controlling the influx of the channel refugees to Germany in the 1930s.

The BBC took the decision to suspend him, which resulted in Match of the Day being broadcast without him or anyone else to present it.

I’m no fan of Lineker and I believe his remarks were crass and insensitive, but I wouldn’t deny his or anyone else’s right to free speech, although it does open the door to some very inane and troubling commentary. Be that as it may, freedom of speech is a fundamental part of our democracy which we are fortunate enough to be privileged to here in the UK, especially when some nations withhold that right.

It was wrong of the BBC to take the action they did but they have climbed down and offered a truce.

Hopefully, Lineker will be more circumspect when giving his views on Twitter, otherwise things could kick-off again!

Michael Smith