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Stand for election

I’m amazed that David Collins cannot work out why he is paying more for his council tax. I don’t know all the details but as Stratton St Margaret Parish Council is probably the biggest, it probably has bigger overheads.

For a start you have the staff running the council, more green spaces to maintain, a cemetery and probably many more responsibilities than other smaller parishes in Swindon. It’s like saying why don’t residents in every town have to pay the same?

He also mentions the downfall of Northern Rock. I think there were several other banks that had a problem, not only in the UK but worldwide. If it were just down to rubbish collection and street lighting I could see his argument, but it isn’t, there are many more costs involved. Anyway, these charges are in the borough council tax not the parish. As I mentioned in my letter recently, if Mr Collins is not happy with the way the parish is run why not stand for for election to the council. Or he will be able to to influence the council by voting in the local elections very soon.

ROY BACON

Foxbridge, Swindon

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What about parents?

YOUR article (23 Feb) about pupils walking into class at Commonweal School whilst high on drugs reveals that staff are helpless to act, police interventions have not helped and sniffer dogs are wanted as the next step in trying to sort things out.

Nowhere in the piece is there any mention of the pupils’ parents.

Am I just naive, or shouldn’t they be told what their children are getting up to?

BAS JONES

Grosvenor Road, Old Town

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Plain bonkers

MOLLY Scott-Cato, the Green MEP for the South West, suggests that the 38 per cent increase in reported hate crime is due to the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump (SA 22 Feb). While both results may not have been to her liking, it’s disingenuous of Ms Scott-Cato to link the Leave campaign’s rhetoric to the increase.

It also says much about Ms Cato’s analysis of the situation that she hails the petition to bar the President of the USA from the UK as ‘heartwarming’ - it’s plain bonkers to me.

Perhaps she ought to read the comments made by Mark Hamilton, the national policing lead for hate crime, who told MPs that the spike in recorded hate crime was “only partly caused by an actual increase in offending” with a significant part of the increase being down to “people reporting incidents they previously would not have”.

DES MORGAN

Caraway Drive, Swindon

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So shocking

It takes a lot to shock me. After walking my little Westie around Covingham, Nythe and Coleview, I returned home in the evening to watch the ending of Channels 4’s Dispatches programme, regarding British women sleeping on the streets, not to mention their usual long wait at the beggars’ relief sanctuary at tax payers’ expense.

The genuine distressed ladies were ignored and told to come back another day. Fancy that one on a winter’s night? Neither do I. One lady was carrying a baby boy, and she was sleeping on the streets at eight months pregnant.

For God’s sake where has this society gone so wrong? That asylum seekers come before our own born and bred citizens, some of them posing as children with a heavier growth beard than I have.Young fighting fit men have been enjoying bed and breakfast at the seaside at our expense, while a British citizen, regardless of her past and present problems, sleeps on the streets.

BILL WILLIAMS

Merlin Way, Covingham