We do not need to be European politically

I was unable to attend the ‘Berkshire for Europe’ campaign in Wokingham, but I did confront a ‘brexitometer’ in a neighbouring town.

It was another landslide for ‘remaining.’ I pointed out that Edward Heath had lied to the nation about the ‘Common Market’ and he had tried to conceal the threat of a European Superstate.

I challenged the man about loss of sovereignty and the issue of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, but he flatly denied there was a problem, saying that the MEPs would have taken care of that on our behalf and the British people didn’t need to have a direct say in it. He also kept referring dismissively to Jacob Rees-Hogg (sic).

Helped by the presence of a fellow Brexiteer, I stood my ground, and after 30 minutes the man told us there was no point in continuing our talk as he obviously wasn’t going to change our minds.

Brexit is in crisis, partly because we have the wrong Prime Minister (I refer readers to an article by Michael St.George on the Conservative Women website: July 15 2018).

As I have pointed out twice to

John Redwood, the Tories made a catastrophic mistake with David Cameron – they should have chosen David Davis.

All the ‘leavers’ I have spoken with agree with me that we want Britain to be an independent country again, with the ability to make our own laws.

We are European geographically, historically and culturally, but we do not need to be European politically.

As for another referendum - No,

No, No! Trevor Edington, Wokingham

Lorries rumbling on

I would like to write in support of Jo Sharp’s letter last week in your paper on heavy traffic and the lack of action by Wokingham Borough Council (WBC) to shut down the Concrete batching plant at the Toutley depot. I have seen their lorries running back in as late as 7.50pm.

It makes me wonder if someone is breaking their CEMP and taking delivery after 6pm which I believe is WBC standard cut off date for developers in Wokingham.

I would find it hard to believe that a house would want a delivery at that time of day. I have also witnessed large clouds of dust on Old Forest Road especially at the bottom end in the area of Monkey Mates.

This would say to me bulk lorries are arriving and leaving without their dust screens down.

Come on WBC get your act together and bring this matter to a close its been going on far too long.

As a member of the Emmbrook Residents Association we constantly asking and being told its with legal . As a local resident enough is enough – we need a statement from WBC which will produce light at the end of the tunnel. Rod Needs, Emmbrook Resident

Let the grass grow

You report complaints about overgrown grass (Grassgate, August 9) but many local residents do want their

councils to make verges, parks and open spaces more attractive for people and wildlife.

Wokingham’s ‘flexible’ approach seems sound in principle. Many people in Earley are very pleased to see roadside flower planting in many places and the mowing contractors already take care to avoid a wild orchid site by the B3270.

The National Pollinator Strategy for England calls for more flowers, trees and shrubs to provide pollen and nectar, and for cutting grass less often to allow plants to flower.

At Earley Green Fair on August

4, 51 people signed a Friends of the Earth petition calling on local Councils to adopt a ‘Pollinator Action Plan’ so that our neighbourhoods can be full of flourishing green spaces for people and bees to enjoy.

In June and July we collected over 115 signatures at events in Reading.

Burnley Borough Council estimates that it saves around £50,000 helping pollinators by not cutting grass so often. They are also making savings and helping bees by planting perennial, beefriendly flowers in their flower beds, instead of annual bedding plants.

Your readers can find the petition to sign belowhttps:// friendsoftheearth.uk /bees John Booth, Reading Friends of the Earth

Emm Brook vandalism

I have just walked along the Emm Brook

for the second time today so I can vouch for the fact that the latest incidence of antisocial behaviour happened in broad daylight.

We were told that the problem of antisocial behaviour, following the setting fire to a tree and the apprehension of the ringleaders, had been addressed. I don’t think so?

I am attaching photographs of the results of these miscreants’ latest incident.

Not satisfied with leaving enough litter of their own on a regular basis, they have decided to misappropriate that of other people.

The bin by the Ripple Stream bridge was vandalised (padlock broken) and the contents strewn around. The bin itself ended up in the Brook.

It doesn’t help that the local council doesn’t empty them often enough, witness the overflowing one by the dragonfly bridge.

For youths with an IQ of not very much and even less to do, this is an invitation to commit further crime, but where are the police? I tried reporting it (101 phone service busy) and via the website – I was referred to the local council.

That was also a complete waste of time, hence my writing to you. Name and address withheld

I’m not asleep on the job

I am responding to the anonymous open letter from the women of Shinfield.

As a councillor named in the article I would like to respond.

I would like to make it clear that I am wide awake to the issues affecting Shinfield. I have access to a wide range of information on the proposed planning applications but it is only the Planning Committee that can make any decisions.

We are in the hands of the Government and its Planning regulations

At the meeting on the 16th of July which was being referred to I was awake and paying attention for the whole meeting it might have been difficult to see some of the time because of the sunlight through the windows.

I sympathise with the concerns that residents have with the amount of development and would like to find a way to stop it but the Government has already given permission for most of it.

The best way for us to stop this is to work together and not just criticise everything that is done.

We are only five Councillors representing the various parts of Shinfield and there are 49 others covering the rest of Wokingham, we can be outvoted on every issue.

We are already appealing to central Government for a change in the planning rules and the residents could help by supporting that action. Cllr Barrie Patman Conservative, Shinfield South, Wokingham Borough Council

Stunned at biz vote

I was stunned – and not in a good way - by Labour councillor Andy Croy’s letter in The Wokingham Paper last week.

He claims there was no need for councillors to vote to help businesses in Wokingham town centre claim hardship rate relief because the council was already helping them.

He is either amazingly complacent, ill-informed, trying to excuse the fact that he left the council meeting before this was discussed – or all three.

If he had talked to the businesses – or if he or the other two Labour councillors had stayed at the council meeting for the debate instead of leaving to go to a Labour party meeting - he would have found out that while the council does have a scheme for helping businesses, many of those businesses are still waiting for their claims to be considered months after applying.

Many of them are really struggling due to potential customers being driven away by the building work that the council has been doing.

Labour may be happy to leave them to fend for themselves but the Lib Dems certainly are not. We are determined to do everything we can to help them.

Councillor Croy’s letter then goes on to attack a cross-party working group that has been set up by the Conservatives at the council to look at the very serious issue of adult social care funding. Labour were invited to join the group but refused to participate.

The Lib Dems have joined the working group. This isn’t because we support the Conservatives. It doesn’t stop us campaigning against them nationally or locally. It simply means we know there are literally thousands of vulnerable people in Wokingham Borough who depend on adult social care, and we are prepared to work with whoever we have to in order to try and make sure those people suffer as little as possible.

Unfortunately it seems the Labour councillors would rather preserve their ideological purity than actually work with others to help the local residents whom they were elected to serve. Repeatedly saying how horrible the Tories are (and the Lib Dems for that matter) may make Labour feel happy but it does absolutely nothing of any practical use while they are waiting for a socialist utopia to arrive.

Which seems likely, on current progress, to be a very long wait indeed. Cllr Prue Bray, Liberal Democrat, Winnersh ward, Wokingham Borough Counil

To Paul’s credit

I refer to Paul Farmer’s letter – [26th July]. Brevity is unrivalled for punching a point home, but the devil is in the detail, and it is our Government’s shake-up of the entire Benefits System that is a total shambles – not just Universal Credit!

Common sense has been abandoned, and as fast as one learns the new names and rules, they change again. Universal Credit is to be paid monthly.

Traditionally, those on low wages, or benefits, got their money weekly – because it was recognised that it is easier to eke out a small income over a week.

Things that are traditional, become so, because they work. One of our members said to me,’ If my benefits are paid monthly, I’m afraid that I might spend money on cigarettes, and not leave enough over to pay my rent.’

Government Ministers – who have always enjoyed a good income – don’t have this temptation. You long for those cigarettes today, the money is there, and your rent is not yet due!

Iain Duncan-Smith, architect of the Benefits Revolution, promised a system where people would always be better off working. We all agree with this, but it has to work in practice. Take Housing Benefit – which is to be incorporated in Universal Credit.

A person who has suffered a severe mental breakdown, cannot, on recovery, just walk into a wellpaid, permanent, job. It is a case of taking what you can get – zero hours contracts, part-time, casual, and insecure.

As soon as you take any work at all, your Housing Benefit is axed. You might get a month’s casual work, and then, a fortnight, with no work at all, but Housing Benefit is not re-instated immediately, so you fall into rent arrears. One of our members, who does casual work on building sites, got so fed up with constantly falling into rent arrears, that he relinquished his council flat, asked us to receive his mail, and now lives in his car – space-restricted, but hassle-free! Common sense requires a system that acknowledges the realities for people getting back into work, and so enables us to achieve Iain

Duncan-Smith’s vision.

When we took a mentally ill heroin addict off the freezing, February street, and paid for him to stay in a Wokingham B&B, it took 10 weeks for Housing Benefit to be organised, but, even then, the B&B would only accept cash – not direct payments – so I asked the Council to pay the Housing Benefit into our Charity’s Account – to enable us to continue paying the addict’s rent. Such an arrangement is not within their system, so they paid all the money to him, he spent it all on drugs – and was back on the street. The stone of Sisyphus! Pam Jenkinson, The Wokingham Crisis House

Wealth & the Burqa

We have seen in the past few days, so many puerile MPs and others who attach to themselves great knowledge and importance, using their jumped up selves to use Boris’s comments on the burqa (burka) to damage his reputation. To try to gain political advantage, to hell with common sense!

It is worth looking at the real-life situation as to why the burqa is worn at all in this country. Some females may assume a need on religious grounds, of culture, tradition etc., to cover themselves when in public; others are perhaps made to wear the garment by their husbands or perhaps fathers, who do not want others to see them.

In the latter case, we need when considering ‘forced imprisonment’ in a full-cover garment, to accept the Koran’s word of God that states ‘Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God hath gifted the one above the other’.

In our multicultural society, we cannot but allow the burqa – or the niqab which has the pillbox style of eye slot that I think Boris was talking about, to be worn - but I would like to bet that a majority of Muslim girls would prefer to be free from constraints.

We have the Human Rights

Act. In more ways than one, we have failed to point out to people (especially males) coming to live here, that the Act applies to everyone – without exception other than perhaps justifiable Religious dogma.

I do concede that the niqab comparison to a post box, just may upset a young woman wearer. It should not, as it is no reflection on their person or religion. Reg Clion, Wokingham