Ward forums help give residents a say

COUNCILLORS Marcus Lapsa, David Skinner and I would like to thank residents for attending the Westwood ward forum on September 18.

As residents should be aware, the council lead ward forums ceased towards the end of last year as part of a cost saving exercise by Coventry’s Labour-run council.

Because the Westwood ward forums were always well attended and supported, it was decided by us that we would continue to run them independently.

The 18th was our second forum. We are very grateful to Westwood Academy for hosting, Guy Ringer from White Watch, Helen May from Warwick University, representatives from the Tile Hill residents group, the Cotes and Trees community group, Westwood Heath Residents’ Association and Canley stakeholders as well as ward residents for their attendance and continued support.

Forums give you an opportunity to have your say on local issues that are important to you. So please, if you live in Westwood, pop along to our next one. This will be held in March 2019.

At each meeting the conversation is topical and diverse, you can raise any issue as long as it relates to our ward. It is an informal meeting, where matters discussed can range from traffic speeds in residential roads to local resident initiatives.

To take part in the conversation, go to the Westwood ward Facebook page, where you will find meeting dates and items covered. Councillor Tim Mayer (Con) Westwood ward

No more academies or free schools?

DO Coventry Labour councillors agree with the Labour policy stated at conference, to halt the establishment of new school academies and free schools and to return power over school admissions and building new schools back to local councils?

Under these plans, responsibility for decision-making and budgets could also eventually be transferred to a governing body of elected parents, teachers, school staff and community representatives.

Do Coventry Labour councillors support this? We would then see an end to anonymous, self-appointed trusts which cannot be voted out. Paul Graham Nuneaton

Victorian isolation far from splendid

ON Sep 21, P Wilson asks: “How can a country control its economy and finances unless it controls its borders?”

It seems to me the writer wants what is now called ‘hard borders’, no customs union, the ability to sell abroad without the constraints of a single market and the freedom to make up the rules that suit the UK and possibly nobody else. In short, what is desired is a return to the isolationism of Victorian Britain.

The call for a “Europe’s domain” that “extends to the shores of the Atlantic, England’s begins there” echoes the words of British statesman and Tory politician George Canning (1770–1827).

‘Splendid isolation’ is a term used to describe the foreign policy pursued by Canning and his kind during the 19th century. It worked for them – Canning became prime minister – but the realists among us must ask if will work now.

A Tory prime minister, Edward Heath, didn’t think so in 1975. All the “talk of sovereignty,” he told sceptics, “would only make sense if the Royal Navy ruled the waves and gunboats could be dispatched anywhere in the world.” I’m pretty certain that Heath was right then, and I remain convinced that anyone who said so now would also be right.

The Empire Strikes Back is a Star Wars sequel, not a prescription for our political future. Kevin Cryan Radford