Let’s hope the council sees the light this Christmas

With all the gloom created by the regeneration works in the Market Place anything that can add a bid of sparkle to the place such as festive lights are very welcome.

And yet every time I’ve visited the town centre in the past couple of weeks many of the lights have not been working. Every year it’s the same. Why do the council and its contractors struggle with the simple things?

On a positive note Wokingham came sixth in the league table for the best place to live in the UK for 2017.

While Christmas lights weren’t one of the criteria it is heartening to know that the town’s residents are striving in the face of adversity. Peter Humphreys, via email

Standing charges

While shopping around for electricity and gas, I found that some energy companies did not want to tell me their unit rates and standing charges. They only wanted to give me a quote, without telling me how the quote was calculated.

I contacted the regulator, Ofgem, and they told me that energy companies are required to produce a Tariff Information Label, showing unit rates and standing charges, for each tariff. They must publish these on their websites and they must provide a written copy free of charge within five days after the day the request was received. How many people know this?

If you are shopping for electricity and gas, always ask potential suppliers for the Tariff Information Label for each of their tariffs. Rex Hora, Earley

Your kebabs are safe

You may have seen some attentiongrabbing headlines in the national press last week suggesting the EU is banning Kebabs. I want to reassure your readers, like many other stories about the EU, that this isn’t the case,

and that they will continue to be able to enjoy a kebab whenever they choose.

What really happened is this, the European Parliament’s Environment and Public Health Committee last week disagreed with a proposal from the European Commission to allow phosphate additives, some of which have been linked to heart disease, to be added to kebab meat. These additives are already illegal under current rules. As such, the European Parliament position is simply to continue with the status quo, which is to not allow the use

of these phosphate-based additives in our kebabs.

This position is sensible for two reasons. Firstly, these additives are currently not allowed for public health reasons. The European Food Safety Authority has not yet decided whether or not these additives are safe to consume, their study on this is expected to report next year and has been made a priority due to concerns over the links between phosphate and cardiovascular disease.

Secondly, these additives could be

used to rip-off consumers. Phosphate has water-binding properties and could be used to increase the weight of meat, intentionally misleading consumers by selling meat with its weight artificially inflated with water. Back in 2013, some UK supermarkets were found to be selling frozen chicken that was in fact up to 20% water. So it’s about protecting your rights too.

Thanks for giving me the space to make the facts clear. Nobody is banning kebabs, simple as that. John Howarth MEP