If the aim is to keep us in the loop, it’s not working

IN Tony Earnshaw’s report (Saturday, July 28, headed Councillors told they must ditch the ‘blather’), we are informed of Kirklees Council’s multimillion pound Transformation programme.

There’s an assurance that ordinary citizens would be at the centre of things and help to make informed choices.

However, I can’t recall reading any survey outlining the source (or logic) of this apparently expensive and opaque project let alone a vote on its feasibility.

Exactly what is holding the T programme together, assuming it hasn’t already fallen apart? (though in reality the numbers may be much higher).

The Home Office report lays bare the huge costs of modern slavery to both our society and our economy. The extent of slavery in the UK today rightly appals us.

Theresa May once called it ‘the great human rights issue of our time,’ but many of her own policies are now undermining efforts to tackle it.

The Conservatives’ ‘hostile environment’ policies, cuts to the police and the Border Force, and their insistence on a destructive hard Brexit, all make it more difficult to protect victims and put human traffickers behind bars.

We demand better in the fight against modern slavery and call on Theresa May to abandon these harmful policies, so we can end slavery in the UK once and for all. FURTHER to Christine Charlesworth’s comments about dredging reservoirs in times of drought, has anyone in the construction industry realised the availability of building or structural stone from submerged schools, houses, churches, bridges, etc, abandoned when the reservoir was originally flooded?

This material must have some value and its reclamation would also increase the volume of stored water.