PR is fair

I fully support Penny Freeman’s letter published in the Observer 4.1.24. Our parliament and government are no longer fit for purpose. We urgently need a general election, but a fair and just one, under a system of proportional representation where everyone has a voice that can be counted and heard.

Living, as most of us around here do, in constituencies with relatively safe seats, held by MPS with considerable majorities, given our first past the post system, many of us who do not support or vote for the party of the sitting MP, know that our votes will not count. Our voices will not be heard. We are always going to be represented by an MP from a party that we do not support.

It is no wonder that many people feel, for this reason, it is not worth voting, because their vote will not change anything.

So I want to wholeheartedly support Penny Freeman’s New Year’s resolution, we need a parliament in which everyone’s voice is heard. services. I hope I can believe that this reduction will be temporary, and in any case even that is bad enough.

There are a number of items about floods.

While I acknowledge that the weather has been exceptional, flooding is not a new local problem, for instance fairly near me in Lake College Lane, let alone what I have seen in Bognor and read about in Barnham and Aldingbourne.

Then we learn that

WSCC is reducing funds in contracts for organisations to provide a range of services for adults with learning difficulties and disabilities, indeed that the value of these contacts is to be reduced from £7.036m to £5m. I make this around a 29 per cent reduction. If, as we are implicitly told in your article, this reduction is at least partly to be offset by better use of public moneys, why has such implicit waste not been tackled before? And is there really less need for such services that such a reduction would suggest?

Then we are told about a programme to improve four fire stations – but the implication in your article is that one of these may have to be dropped from this phase, and we are also told there are in any case another 18 stations waiting for phase 2.

And then I could also add what we read most weeks latterly about water quality and problems with outflows of water contaminated by sewage.

I know that good news (mainly from individuals, charities, and clubs) was also reported last week, but the agglomeration above sends alarm bells. Surely we can do better in a civilised and caring society.