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A fantastic project

I was enormously heartened by the article that reported how successful the Winter Hostel Project had been, something to make our town proud. The huge amount of volunteered hours put in once again proves that Swindon really does care and that when some of the people using the shelter gets a little help their lives can be changed.

There WILL be another venue available next year, there always are empty buildings and this must be repeated to protect our most vulnerable at the most difficult time of year.

If I had one criticism it would be why stop in March? If we can turn people’s lives around in a few months why not carry on and sort out all of our homeless moving forward?

Our Council spent £99,000 on barricades to keep the homeless from sleeping in the town centre car parks; that would go a long way to funding this type of project in the future.

Some people choose to sleep rough, some are reduced to that arrangement by circumstance, some have no one to turn to.

It could happen to anyone, but this project has proved that most will respond with a little bit of kindness.

Well done and thank you to all of the volunteers who helped through what has been a long cold winter, I salute you.

Kevin Edmonds, Covingham

Is Russia to blame?

I totally agree with GA Woodward in Saturday’s Adver. The UK government strikes out at Russia at every opportunity. They seem determined to provoke a war with Russia, in the safe knowledge, of course, that NATO will pile in too.

Putin, to me, has been very patient and tolerant of the West. NATO member Turkey shot down a Russian war plane. What was Putin’s reaction to that? Had that been the other way round with a Turkish aircraft downed, the West would probably be at war now.

What the UK doesn’t like about Russia is that it’s operating very effectively, at President Assad’s request in Syria, against the terrorists, the side the UK decided to back and train.

Had the UK joined Assad this Civil War would have been over years ago, but the British government wanted illegal regime change, so it drags on.

This episode in Salisbury concerned a double agent spy; this means he would have upset two nations, two enemies, not just Russia.

Tests on this nerve agent will no doubt prove it was made in Russia. Just because I drive a Ferrari doesn’t mean I am Italian. The international weapons expert team will take two weeks to decide the origin, Boris blamed the Russian State after one day.

No one seems to have picked up on the fact that this so-called military grade nerve agent didn’t actually KILL the target.

Are we being led to believe that this obsolete nerve agent is the best the Russian State has? The guy in Korea was dead within minutes. Porton Down talks openly of producing chemical agents 20 times more deadly than Sarin. Their Above Top Secret biological ones will wipe out populations. Don’t think Russia doesn’t have the equivalent.

It is a pity Theresa May isn’t venting her bile on the EU negotiators instead of just rolling over. She seems to prefer a war with Putin.

Alan Spencer, Swindon

Just get on with it

I used my democratic vote maintained in blood by the loss of my kith and kin, a few of many who shared that pain on our island during two world wars. The pamphlet I received through my front door stated quite clearly in or out of the European Disunion. No transition period.

Why the delay? Why the cringeing acceptance of our elected MPs to accept anything but a clean and declared date of complete withdrawal? Most of them voted to remain in their best interests, not in the best interests of the people who vote them in.

They do so as Theresa May makes her second monumental blunder after nearly losing the last election. I refer to our salt and earth fishing community as an island, being further delayed its natural rights to appease the fat cats of Brussels, who only feel seasick in their gait after wining and dining at our and other nations’ expense.

Bill Williams, Merlin Way, Covingham, Swindon