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

Support for hospice

In reply to Mrs Lawrence’s letter in Tuesdays Advertiser, while we at Prospect Hospice have embraced digital means in order to engage with our local community, we certainly do still accept and encourage people to make donations over the phone, via the post and in person.

We accept that many people do not have access to computers and offer a variety of ways to support us.

We have 18 shops in and around Swindon, our friendly team are able to take donations over the phone by calling 01793 813355 or for anyone wishing to donate my sending a cheque, they can post this to us at Prospect Hospice, Moormead Road, Wroughton, Swindon, SN4 9BY.

Another option is to donate in person at the hospice and our garden fete which takes place on Saturday 31 August is a lovely time to do this and to learn more about what we do.

The fete is free to attend and will run from 12noon to 4pm. A free park and ride service will be available from Nationwide. There will be a range of stalls to suit the whole family including fun fair rides for the children, a petting zoo, arts and crafts and refreshments.

Thank you to everyone who continues to support the hospice, no matter how you choose to donate to us.

Helen Owen, Prospect Hospice

Iran attacks its own

Re No appetite for Iran war (Peter Smith SA July 27)

Peter Smith is correct: Iran has never attacked another country. It has no need. It attacks its own citizens instead.

Between July and September 1988 the Iranian authorities extra-judicially executed 1000s of their political opponents and dumped their bodies in mass unmarked graves.

Minimum estimates (Amnesty International) put the total at 5000. Crimes against humanity. Today the Iranian authorities still regard their killers as national heroes.

For decades they have suppressed freedom of belief, expression and peaceful assembly, conducted unfair and secret trials, committed widespread torture, executed hundreds of people every year (teenagers hanged from crane jibs in public), and 1000s more on death row.They use illegal detention on an international scale. Torture is common, including mock executions.

Thanks to one vacuous comment by our new prime minister, when Foreign Secretary, one British-Iranian prisoner, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, remains shackled to her bed in an Iranian psychiatric hospital.

Peter Smith asserts there is no Iranian nuclear weapons programme.Yet in today’s national newspapers it states: ‘Experts warn higher enrichment and a growing stockpile narrow the one-year window Iran would need to have enough material to make an atomic bomb’.

Jeff Adams, Bloomsbury, Swindon

Column was a bit rich

In his weekly Swindon Adver column of July 26, North Swindon MP Justin Tomlinson says he his delighted that Boris Johnson is going to invest billions in the vital public services we use and rely on everyday. I find that a bit rich coming from a politician who since being elected in 2010 as clapped and cheered every time a new austerity measure has been inflicted on the public services. Nearly a decade of austerity supported by MP Tomlinson has wreaked havoc and created destitution across the UK. Perhaps in his next column he can tell us why since 2010 he has supported policies that have destroyed the same public services which he now considers as being vital to the country

Martin Webb, Old Town