Traffic diverted as crossings shut

Four level crossings in Canterbury are being closed for maintenance work.

Drivers will be diverted away from the Chartham, Sturry, St Stephen’s and Whitehall crossings while Network Rail carries out out rail track maintenance and inspections.

St Stephen’s will be closed from 6am to 8pm on Sunday and from 12.15am to 4.30am on Tuesday.

During these times, traffic will be banned from St Stephen’s Road in the area of the crossing and will be diverted via Station Road West and St Dunstan’s.

Sturry level crossing will be closed from 11.50pm on Saturday to 4.15am on Monday, with no through route between the A28 Mill Road and A291 Sturry Hill.

Meanwhile Chartham crossing will be closed between 2am and 8pm on Sunday.

An alternative route for traffic is in place via the A28 Ashford Road and Shalmsford Street.

Finally, Whitehall crossing will be closed on Sunday for up to a day, with Whitehall Road being closed 10 metres either side of the crossing.

n To judge from his accusation that Rosie Duffield is “disregarding democracy” [Letters, Gazette, February 21], Julian Brazier has got his ideas about democracy in a dreadful twist.

I recall that for most his time as our MP Mr Brazier was an ardent supporter of the UK having a second referendum on Europe as he didn’t like the outcome of the first one in 1975. Sir Julian changed his tune in 2016, following the narrow referendum vote for Brexit. Then it suddenly became undemocratic to ask, as our new MP does, for a further popular vote.

Hitler, by the way, set the example. In March 1933, the Nazis topped the poll in Germany’s Reichstag election with 17.3 million votes, though without getting a majority. They used the power that gave them to decree abolition of Reichstag elections for a thousand years. For how long would Brazier want to ban any further popular vote in Britain on our place in Europe?

He reminds us that 17-plus million people voted for Leave. Why do the Brexiteers who constantly quote this figure never think about the 48 million people living in the UK who did NOT vote to leave the EU?

Many of these were of course children. But many millions were either teenagers wrongly deprived of a place on the electoral register or adults who were on the electoral register but prevented by Britain’s antiquated electoral rules from voting in that referendum.

In the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, everyone on the register had the right to vote, including all longterm settled EU citizens. But in the 2016 EU referendum, they were only allowed to vote if their country had been under British rule a hundred years ago.

This absurd distinction meant that while people from Cyprus, Ireland and Malta were able to vote, even if only settled here a few years, those from the other 24 EU states were disenfranchised, even if settled here for all their adult life, and sometimes serving on local councils; I heard that the mayor of Ipswich, Danish-born, was one so