Get to know your councillor

I have to wholeheartedly agree with the first part of the letter from Graham Sutherland [‘Common sense needed at tip on Cobbs Wood’, Kentish Express letters, May 20].

He is right, local elections starting with parish councils are extremely important and, yes, we do give up sometimes a substantial amount of time trying to improve our parishes.

I also agree with him about those in the next two tiers (Ashford Borough Council and Kent County Council) should put out leaflets to let people know who to vote for and why.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen for the parish tier, simply because parish councils do not have any political affiliation and therefore have no mechanism that would fund the production of any election material, unless it comes out of the pocket of the prospective parish councillor.

It is for this reason alone that parish councillors do not usually canvass prior to an election nor distribute any literature – we have to rely on the work that is done by the parish council, this can be found out by checking their website, reading their newsletters or even by finding out when your PC meet and pop along to the meetings.

Everyone should take the time to get to know their local parish councillor, find out what the PC

spends their money on each year and how much work they do for their individual parishes across Kent – I hear various comments about the portion of the council tax for parishes going up each year but this will be such a tiny portion of the council tax and the really best part is that every single penny raised by a parish council can only be spent within the parish that you live, unlike the other parts of the council tax that can be spent anywhere within the borough or county. I would like to thank Graham for his positive comments about parish councils and urge everyone to get to know yours a little better as you will always be welcomed.

Ian McClintock

Chairman and member for Chilmington Green

Great Chart with Singleton Parish Council

Karl Marx said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, and the truth of this has been made clear in our own time.

In the 16th Century a supranational organisation, the Church, had become corrupt, with a leadership more concerned with temporal advantage than with Christianity. The inevitable result was that there would be a split, and of course England played a major part. Now today we see a similar institution, albeit non-religious, which has become beholden to fulfilling its own ambitions before any other consideration, namely the European Union. Again England, or rather the UK, has taken a leading role in revolting against control by a foreign power.

Of course the Reformation did indeed lead to tragedy, as the religious wars of the succeeding century killed a significant percentage of the population of Europe. Fortunately the behaviour of the EU is much more farcical, as it attempts to assert that somehow British sausages threaten the former’s beloved single market, although the potential for violence is increased by the attempts by Brussels to undermine Northern Ireland, as it seeks to exact revenge for the British daring to defy the putative superstate. It is unfortunate that a naive Democratic administration

in Washington does not comprehend the real motives underlying the stance being taken by Brussels.

The fact is that the European project has become a kind of secular religion for those desperate to see it convert the democratic states of Europe into a single undemocratic entity. Our own Remainers, from their position on their knees to Brussels, see defiance of the European Commission as some sort of apostasy, much as the mediaeval Church saw opposing the will of the Pope and the Cardinals as a sin.

As a practising Roman

Catholic I know that the reforms engendered by the Reformation completely changed the Church of Rome, and the passage of the centuries have seen it become worthy of its mission, but I suspect that the European Union lacks either the genuine ethical basis, or indeed the time, to save it from ignominious collapse is the near future.

Colin Bullen