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

Don’t scrap cash payments for parking

I am appalled that councils across Kent are removing ticket machines from car parks and require everyone to make payment digitally.

What are all those people who do not use technology supposed to do?

Are we to be issued with a parking penalty every time we are unable to pay? And what about those occasions when the there is no signal, or those places that never have a signal?

A friend quite recently tried to pay digitally and there was no signal. Fortunately that car park still accepted cash.

Surely the recent complete wipeout of the internet across the whole NHS network, resulting in doctors being unable to access patients’ notes and chaos over appointments, should be a wake-up call over the risks of relying totally on technology.

Young people may choose not to carry cash but cash still has its uses. There are still many people of the generations that grew up before this technology arrived. They are not necessarily comfortable with it or even able to use it at all.

Even when cash is acceptable, technology can cause problems. When scammed not so long ago I had to cancel all my bank cards. Until new ones arrived I was unable shop in person once the cash I had in the house had been used up, could not draw more cash from the ATM, could not shop online, could not pay for petrol, etc. Life went on hold.

Another problem for us oldies is the complexity of websites. Those who set up computer systems for local and national government departments, banking, travel, utilities, large companies and many other concerns are almost certainly young and have grown up with technology.

They have no concept of the difficulties experienced by older people who have come to technology late.

Alison Black

Discrimination of station car park changes

In your story on the scrapping of ticket machines at station car parks, the passenger service director of Southeastern is quoted as saying the new system is the "most cost-effective, efficient and secure" way for car parks to be managed.

The new system, however, is discriminatory in that if you do not possess a smartphone or do not wish to download their app then you will not be able to park in their car parks.

Why the option of paying at the station ticket office is being removed is not properly explained and does not seem to fall under any of the criteria referred to by David Wornham.

Mr Wornham's claim of this new system being the most secure can also be challenged, as coincidentally in the same week as the mainstream media have reported on QR scams that are proliferating in car parks around the country.

It does not appear that passengers best interests are being served by this move, no great shock there.

I wonder if Southeastern would be happy refunding any person who is scammed at one of their car parks?

Alan Mckenna

Labour punishes pensioners to appease unions

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first action on taking office was to penalise some of the most vulnerable in our society by taking away the Winter Fuel Allowance, which was a lifeline for many elderly people who, in cold weather, often have to choose between eating or heating.

The Chancellor claims that she was forced into taking her cruel action because of the £20 billion hole in public finances (resulting from the triple whammy of Brexit, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine coming on top of the deficit in public finances inherited by the Conservatives from the previous Labour administration) but there are plenty of alternative ways for Reeves to make savings.

For a start she might like to consider putting an end to the subsidising of restaurants and bars at the Palace of Westminster that allows well-paid MPs and Lords to stuff their greedy maws at prices well below those that the rest of us have to pay!

And how about cutting back on the still ridiculously generous expense allowances enjoyed by members of both Houses?

If the truth be known, Reeves has taken money from pensioners to fund the generous salary increases already paid out by the new government to appease Labour’s union paymasters.

Reeves is on record as having previously complained that her £91,000 parliamentary salary was not enough to maintain her lifestyle (things should have become a little easier for the poor woman now that, as Chancellor, her salary has increased to £150,000) so at least she won’t be suffering from cold or starvation this winter!

Bob Readman

Payments for the elderly are getting smaller

Pensioners have to pay tax on our meagre retirement pension and now we are going to lose our winter fuel payments.

We have already lost our TV licence payments. Do the Powers That Be expect us to sit in the cold and dark for the winter but also have no entertainment?

Another thing to mention is the Christmas Bonus that we get in December. When it was first awarded 51 years ago it really meant something. Nowadays I am sure that most pensioners don’t realise when they get it as it is so small.

Has any other payment stayed the same for 51 years?

Jean Rolfe

Anger isn’t the same as racism

A society in which three little girls can be killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class is terminally sick.

Ultimate responsibility for this depressing occurrence lies with the organisations, political parties and activists whose reckless social engineering of our society since the mid-20th century, and the cutting of the threads that once bound it together, made the atrocity in Southport possible in the first place.

Sadly, it seems that reckless social engineering will now continue and accelerate. Those objecting to it will, as usual, be dismissed by Keir Stalin and his followers as 'far right' idiots and the mindless violence of what one contributor to this letters page elegantly described as 'evil racist scum' will be used as evidence for the dangerous growth of 'far right' ideology.

This will, in turn, give the new government a convenient excuse to diminish further what freedom of expression we have left.

Much of the recent violence would be better described as impotent anger. I sensed it myself two decades ago during a teaching job in the former East Germany, when I was occasionally assigned the task of teaching a class of adolescent skinheads.

It was easier for the 'liberal establishment' to dismiss these young males as incorrigibly nasty than to try to analyse and understand their behaviour. These young 'neo-Nazis' I met in Germany were not Nazis. They weren't even 'racist'. They were just angry.

I don't think human beings are innately inclined to hate others. Instinctively they prefer to co-operate with others, as long as they don't think their interests are being sacrificed for the benefit of those others.

It is noteworthy that a little over 20 years since my residence in Germany, the Bundestag (the German parliament) has 77 seats occupied by AFD representatives, many of whom make Nigel Farage look like a purveyor of liberal-left ideology.

We see a similar situation in other European countries, notably France.

Consequently, when I saw Mr Farage condemned last week as a politician who 'stirs up hatred and division', I just sighed.

David Topple

Government has poured fuel on fire of riots

Flashback to 2020. Black Lives Matter riots broke out in many places despite violating strict Covid lockdown laws.

In London, the Cenotaph and Churchill's statue were defiled and dozens of police officers injured. Elsewhere, hysterical mobs tore down statues while the boys in blue looked on and did nothing.

A few days later Kier Starmer and Angela Rayner (and some PCs) 'took the knee' to commemorate a career criminal.

Fast forward to this year. White yobs try out the same street fighting tactics but get a very different response from the establishment.

There are no bleeding-heart white liberals, civil rights lawyers, social workers, churchmen and other do-gooders to plead their cause or come up with every excuse in the book to get them off the hook.

On the contrary, the reaction of this lot - and the government - has been unbelievably vindictive and spiteful. Instead of trying to defuse things they just pour fuel on the fire.

Two-tier policing? Definitely. Two-tier sentencing also - stronger sentences for thought than real crimes and two-tier news reporting.

John Helm

Learn lessons on extremists from history

It is widely believed that false information spread on social media about the background and religion of the suspect in the stabbing of the three young girls in Southport has been blamed for the rioting led by the far right across Britain.

Against this background, it is encouraging to note that the government has responded by saying that children should be taught how to spot extremist content and fake news on line.

As a result, the new Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has ordered a review of the primary and secondary school curriculum with a a view to enhancing the skills of critical thinking in children.

She talked about embedding these skills across different subjects in order to arm children against what she called “putrid conspiracy theories”.

As a retired secondary school teacher who spent almost 40 years teaching history in schools in Kent, it occurred to me that history, if taught well, already addresses these issues.

In fact the National Curriculum for 5-11 year olds states that one of its purposes ‘is to get pupils to understand how evidence is used rigorously to make historical claims and discern how and why arguments and interpretations of the past have been constructed’. For 11-14 year olds: ‘Teaching should equip pupils to ask perceptive questions, think critically, weigh evidence, sift arguments and develop perspective and judgment’.

It strikes me that history in school is ideally placed to show pupils that the skills picked up in this subject are transferable and can and should be applied, in contemporary contexts and throughout their lives.

John Cooper

Public sector never accounts for failure

Following the tragic deaths in Nottingham and Southport, when is the public going to demand that we name/shame/interview and dismiss those that should be held accountable.

And how many more need to perish before something is done to prevent further misery.

Most people are likely fed up with the statement so often made by those in the public sector that "lessons need to be learned".

When it comes to dealing with failure, the private sector is light years ahead of the public sector and is not afraid to dismiss people on the grounds of incompetence or failure. Above all, they do not reward failure.

Pause for a moment and look at the way people were treated to prevent any blame being accepted by the authorities when the public demanded answers over the Hillsborough disaster and the Manchester Area bombing. Shameful.

The anonymity enjoyed by the public sector/government needs to cease and be replaced by the word they often use but never mean - transparency.

David Grummitt