In this week’s readers’ letters a young girls calls for litter bins to be placed on her walking route to school…
Kudos to the committee for booking Ash
For those of you who didn’t turn up for the Ash gig on the Tuesday Market Place last Friday as part of the Festival Too programme, all I can say is, big mistake.
A perfect warm night, a cold beer and Tim Wheeler, Rick McMurray and Mark Hamilton playing their socks off was glorious fun.
Opening with ‘A Life Less Ordinary,’ Ash blasted through a catalogue of tracks we all know and love… it was all killer and no filler, and frankly, the committee should book them again next year.
Big respect to the organisers and those funding these free events, and long may it continue.
Did anyone not leave the market square on Friday night without a big grin and a ‘Girl From Mars’ earworm following them home? Me neither!
Steve Mackinder
Denver
Can we please have a bin on bus route?
I walk to and from school every day along Harding’s Pits bus route.
I have seen lots of litter when I walk this way, which makes me upset as the animals can get hurt by the litter.
I once borrowed a litter picker from school. Me, my sisters and my mum collected two bugs full of rubbish and there was still more we could not fit in the bags.
Please can we have some bins on the Harding’s Pits bus route so people will stop littering?
We have noticed the new path on the corner which looks excellent. Can we please have a bin near here to help keep it clean and tidy.
Thankyou for taking the time to read my letter.
Poppie Brassett
Nine-years-old
South Lynn
EDITOR: This lovely letter was forwarded to us by Cllr Alexandra Kemp. Cllr Kemp will try to get a bin installed and said: “It is good to see young people caring about their community like this .”
Bus lane would cause mayhem
Norfolk County Council is being really stupid about putting a bus lane down Hardwick Road in Lynn.
The traffic going in and out of Lynn is bad enough, but take away a lane, and it will cause absolute mayhem in either direction.
I live in Runcton Holme, and the new bus lane would cause havoc for us as we take our youngest grandson to nursery. Also, why is it going to cost so much money?
Paul Weston
Runcton Holme
MP Terry showed a lot of bottle in vote
In previous Viewpoints, I have written about some of Terry Jerry, SW Norfolk MP’s misjudgements on a variety of issues, but I have to commend him on a recent Parliamentary vote in defiance of his Labour Party.
He voted against the planned brutal benefits cuts to his credit.
The internal pressures on him must have been immense, and what he did took a lot of bottle. On the needs of constituents over politics, the member ‘walked the walk’.
I would like to put on record my heartfelt thanks to Terry for his conscientious thinking from one who is severely disabled with prostate cancer, as another medical jurisdiction. My challenge is being around at the next general election, and with the excellent treatment I am receiving from Bridge Street Surgery and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital I go forward resolutely.
David Fleming
Downham
Reader has last laugh over water butts
In the last decade, I have installed nine water butts, connected to all our gutters. When I have mentioned this to friends and neighbours, they laugh with an occasional sarcastic comment.
Guess whose smiling in the evenings now as I water our shrubs and containers with 70% water still stored.
Thomas Eggett
Downham
In breach of its obligations
The introduction of fighter jets with nuclear arms to Norfolk, so welcomed by David Fleming in last week’s letters page will make not just us locals, but people throughout the country, less safe.
The first thing to note, in relation to Britain’s holding of nuclear weapons, is that no Prime Minister, Labour or Tory, has committed to a ‘no first use’ policy. This means that they are prepared to start a nuclear war with all the devastating events that would follow.
If a first strike was aimed at a country with an advance defence shield, not all of Britain’s missiles would get through, and the response that came back would kill the whole population here.
While we would not be subject to a pre-emptive strike if we had no nuclear weapons, as we have, that is indeed a risk.
We are tied in with the USA – despite what we are told, Britain has no independent nuclear weapons. America must release the ‘key’ before they can be used.
If the USA gets involved in a nuclear war, inevitably we will receive our due share of nuclear bombs.
It might be thought that one advantage of a country holding nuclear weapons is that it would deter a non-nuclear nation from going to war with it. Apparently not. The USA twice during the Vietnam war seriously thought about winning it by dropping nuclear weapons on North Vietnam. But in both cases it was decided that the political, economic and other disadvantages that would follow would make it not worth while.
Similarly, the fact that Britain had nuclear weapons did not deter the Argentinian Junta from trying to get back the Falklands/Malvenas by force.
The hypocrisy of Britain is gobsmacking. Iran is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, so we know from inspections and other sources that Iran has no nuclear weapons. Yet it was attacked by Trump with no word of dissent from Starmer and his cronies.
Yet Israel, which is not a signatory to the treaty and allows no inspections, has a minimum of 90 nuclear warheads. Starmer continues to supply spares to its destructive bombers and its nuclear armed submarines – pretending not to know that this rogue state has nuclear weapons. Starmer and his ministers are complicit in all he horrors we see on our TV screens daily.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty not only required countries that do not have nuclear weapons not to acquire them, but those that do to reduce and finally eliminate them. Britain is doing the opposite and is in breach of its obligations. In order to get people to accept the big cuts that will come with increased military expenditure the perceived threat from outside has to be ramped up. But who is threatening whom?
I have not been aware of a Chinese naval fleet exercising in the English Channel but do remember two occasions when a Nato force has carried out large provocative exercises in the South China Sea. The same is the case Europe. When the Warsaw Pact was disbanded in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev was promised that Nato would move ‘not one inch further east”. In fact NATO has moved almost 1,000 miles further east.
South Africa unilaterally gave up its nuclear arms at the end of apartheid; Sweden has consciously adopted a no nuclear arms policy; Austria signed an agreement with the Soviets that it would not join any military organisation that is hostile to Russia. Nothing terrible has happened to these countries because of their actions, and their citizens can sleep soundly in the knowledge that no Russian or Chinese nuclear weapons are targeted on them.
Welfare, not warfare!
Kevin Waddington
South Lynn
Pictures of the Week
John Elson’s Weekly Cartoon
