Letters: Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Anonymity is granted only at the discretion of the editor, who also reserves the right to edit letters.

Share the wealth

BILL Williams is right to be outraged about homelessness in Britain. Homelessness is a result of accelerating inequality, the worst in Europe, as wealth accumulates more and more in the hands of the rich. It is a result of marketisation of housing; the shift from the point of housing as being the provision of places for people to live to housing as a means for making private profit. And it’s the result of the bedroom tax.

Homelessness has nothing to do with people seeking asylum, often from mayhem directly or indirectly caused by UK military interventions.

On another issue Des Morgan wrote to oppose gay marriage. Ostensibly avoiding moralistic comment on homosexuality he stakes his position on rights. He says the Cof E has the right to determine its own rules. Surely this must include the rights of gay members of the Cof E to work to change those rules. After all the C of E has always been split between busy bodies who want to vehemently dictate how other people must live and those who think they have a mission to make the world a better place.

Should those of us outside care about an institution denying equality to some of its members? I think we should. The various Christian institutions claim a uniquely privileged position in influencing all of our lives. We should oppose such an organisation being a bastion of inequality. Not least is this shown in schools. Hardly a school gets opened these days without it claiming some Christian ethos. If part of that ethos is inequality it is bad for all of us. We have after all not long done away with the stigma of being “born out of wedlock”. In the USA and elsewhere this remains an issue for some.

PETER SMITH Woodside Avenue Swindon

An obscene amount

HOUSEBUILDER Taylor Wimpey has just published its 2016 trading results showing that pre-tax profits were 22%. The other few companies in this tightly controlled almost monopolistic market will be reporting soon and will no doubt show similar gratifying results for their shareholders.

Taylor Wimpey’s average selling price was £255,000 of which £209,000 was total cost and £46,000 was sheer profit. Their ability to sell units at this mark-up is no doubt helped by the Government’s scheme to help first-time buyers.

I think profits of this magnitude are obscene when people are struggling to put a roof over their heads. DON REEVE Old Town, Swindon No satisfaction I ATTENDED the north Swindon central parish meeting on Tuesday last week. I am not sure what I was expecting, but left sadly dissatisfied. Of the eight councillors on the council, only four felt the need to attend and indeed one member, was also absent from the last meeting, and yet felt keen enough to ask for a particular motion to be supported.

There were only approximately six members of the public present so the residents of north Swindon are happy with whatever is put out in their names.

The public questions were met with what I would call a measure of complete irreverence. Most of the replies were on the line of ‘we have a cash reserve of X amount for that’; nobody said where the reserve was coming from.

SBC wants to close the toilets in Gorse Hill in Chapel Street, so bend-your-arms tactics are used, so parish take it on or it’s closed. My point was to close it and let the council explain to the public their policy. But no, we’ll take it on, never mind the costs.

Same lines were taken on the seven community centres in the parish; I’m now told they are all running on a viable turnaround and so there is no cost to the parish. They agreed to take on the Pine Trees centre as the future parish office HQ, but no mention of who pays for the upkeep and the repair bill which is gone beyond any reasonable amount.

Same line was taken with the four libraries, and indeed when the library official told us we could have the bronze standard of service at £5,400 a year or the silver at £9,400 a year, yes we went for the silver. We then discussed the Moredon playing fields and the new set up, which we were told will cost around £3 million. That was also agreed. During this period of council ‘business’ the members of the public were not allowed to ask any questions on these matters.

Finally we came to motion 14, at which point we were told we would have to leave as it was a private matter relating to staff employment. I don’t how the other members of the public felt, but as I am paying for these staff, can it be in order that I know what is being signed in my name?

T REYNOLDS Wheeler Avenue Swindon

Not for residents only

I FEEL that I must reply to Roy Bacon`s letter in the Adver of Monday 27th Feb. Yes, Stratton St Margaret is probably the biggest in Swindon. He argues that we have more green spaces, a cemetery, plus we probably have too many councilors on the parish council.

But I would like to point out to him that all these things are available to all the residents of Swindon. There are no notices up saying for use of Stratton St Margaret Residents Only.

If we all have the same use of facilities then we should all pay the same. I would ask Roy Bacon what exactly we in Stratton are getting that others are not?

We all know that we get the same rubbish collection and street lighting and this further adds to my statement that in that case we should all be getting the same for our payments. I should also like to at the point totally agree with the letter from Bill Williams in the same Adver of that date. When are we going to look after our own?

DAVID COLLINS Blake Crescent Swindon

Spending is easy

IN the letter by Axmed Bahjad (Mar 3) he states that he has been protesting against cuts in public spending outside the Swindon council offices.

I wonder if Axmed Bahjad would be equally keen to join a campaign that was in favour of wealth creation and supporting exports by British industry.

It is very easy to spend money. Anybody can spend money but making money involves brains and hard work.

A huge financial investment is involved in wealth creation. Products need to be of high quality and fashionable to keep up with the changing tastes of consumers.

The problem with left wing politics is that it is all about spending and left wingers are not interested in doing to all the hard work that is involved in wealth creation.

STEVE HALDEN Beaufort Green Swindon Move the lights THE installation of the traffic lights at Greenbridge in Swindon seems to have created quite a bit of debate on these pages, and with good reason. There are delays where there weren’t any before and it is extremely frustrating.

But I have come to the conclusion that these lights were put in in the wrong place. Anybody who uses the Gablecross roundabout off the A419 will know what I mean.

There is invariably a long and frustrating queue on exiting at this junction in the mornings from the north of Swindon, as traffic waits for vehicles to pass heading in the Oxford direction.

A set of well regulated, sensibly timed traffic lights here would surely solve the problem. They needn’t cost anything - just move the ones from down the road at Greenbridge J BROWN Cricklade Getting things done EVERY time that Britain tries to do anything we find that it cannot be done because of the EU.

Industry is strangled by red tape and EU regulations make state aid illegal.

Rolls Royces is in trouble but it breaks EU law for the British government to try to help sort out the problems at Rolls Royce.

When we try to prevent terrorism we find that our laws break the EU Human Rights Act and our laws are struck down by the courts.

We voted to leave the EU but we find that it is much harder than we thought and that it is going to take many years to negotiate our EU exit.

During WWII there was a philosophy of we can do it. We could go anywhere we needed to go, and we could make anything we needed to make.

Britain needs to get back to our wartime attitude, that if something needs to be done it will be done, and it will done straight away.

TERRY HAYWARD Burnham Road Swindon

Your time is up

WHAT do you want for breakfast, M’Lords?

Soft boiled, hard boiled, scrambled or poached?

So it sounded to me when they were presented with a simple question by Theresa May about triggering Article 50.

Time they were retired like the rest of us pensioners and a new elected second House was formed like other democratic countries of the world.

We have plenty of charitable institutions in our country without the taxpaying public having to support hundreds of old age pensioners sitting in the House of Lords disrupting the business of the House of Commons.

IAN HUNT Hill View Road, Swindon

A voluntary director?

RE Volunteers needed (Adver 3/3/17 Jonathan Whalley).

May one ask Jonathan Whalley, regional director of Barnado’s, if he is himself a volunteer? If not, how much salary does he earn?

Just curious.

JEFF ADAMS Bloomsbury, Swindon