Our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent and beyond.

Some letters refer to past correspondence which can be found by clicking here. Join the debate by emailing letters@thekmgroup.co.uk

There’s more to local papers than just news

I read with interest the article co-authored by your editorial director, Ian Carter and five other local newspaper bosses and titled: ‘BBC’s a threat to local journalism’.

On checking, I see that it was simultaneously published in over 30 local newspapers and on online news platforms around the country. Collectively they argue that the BBC’s decision to set up online news in 43 local areas in the country is a direct challenge to the future of local newspapers, like the KM.

To this I would say, forget the BBC for a moment and examine the fact that in the last decade about 300 local newspapers in the country have closed down. Their demise can largely put down to the rise and dominance of the media giants, Facebook and Google.

The figures speak for themselves. Early in this century when Facebook was in its infancy, the UK regional newspaper market was worth £2.5bn. At the end of last year, it was valued at £241m.

This has gone hand-in-hand with the enormous loss of newspaper advertising revenue, once the lifeblood of the newspaper market and generating only £229m last year. Many newspaper companies in Britain, like KM, have responded by successfully going digital but the fact remains that the shift to news online remains largely a case of giving up print pounds for digital pennies.

The funding problems of local newspapers up to now have had little to do with the BBC. All that can be said is that the implementation of BBC plans and its entrance into the market is not going to make their existing problems any easier. It does, however, need to be recognised that they are largely the result of the seismic shift in people getting their news from online media.

I fully agree with Owen Meredith, the chief executive of industry body the News Media Association, who has said: “Local news media performs a vital role in holding power to account and scrutinising authority on behalf of communities across the UK”.

In other words, there is much more to local newspapers than just local news. Needless to say, the media giants have no interest in taking on this role at all and consequently we are all diminished.

John Cooper

Tell us more about pub food

With pubs regularly shutting their doors forever, it’s cooking and serving good food that’s going to give them the chance to survive.

So whilst l enjoy Secret Drinker’s columns, like many of your readers I’d like to know more about the food in the pubs he reviews.

It’s all well and good telling me how the Hogoblin, Witches Brew or Beelzebub (or whatever ridiculous names breweries have come up with lately) beers taste but I’d rather hear about the grub - and, perhaps, wine.

Please increase his expenses so he can report on what’s just as important to a fair number of your readers.

Alan Palmer

Immigration helps growth but not productivity

Neither the government nor the government in waiting appear to understand the difference between growth and productivity.

Both the Conservatives and Labour keep banging on about increasing growth to finance their programmes and solve the country’s economic problems. They never mention productivity although it is by increasing productivity, rather than growth, that we will become richer. If the growth in GDP is less than the growth in the population, as has been the case in the past year, we are less productive and individually poorer.

This belief in growth as a panacea for our economic problems explains the government's reluctance to clamp down on high immigration rates. While immigration will usually boost growth, the increased availability of cheap labour discourages expenditures on automation and productivity gains.

Also, depending on immigration for cheap labour is unsustainable. Once established here, a low paid immigrant worker will simply start looking for a better paid job.

Derek Wisdom

Despair for future of our society

Having read through the letters page last week, I begin to fear that my knowledge of the word ‘extremism’ is faulty.

Certainly the letter that suggests we question our democracy has a valid point. Much of what we are presented as news is propaganda.

I do indeed have as much sympathy for the people of Dresden, Hamburg and other German Cities as I have for the people of Coventry and London and other cities in this country. The residents of all of these cities suffered in a war that was fought over their heads and certainly not in their interests.

Wars are fought in the interests of the ruling classes, the working classes suffer the consequences.

This is just as true of the wars being fought in the Ukraine and in Israel/Palestine, both conflicts dominated by wider political desires of the major powers.

When a quiet, modest man like Jeremy Corbyn, who attracted thousands of young people into politics, giving them hope that politics could be good, can be condemned as an ‘extremist’, and yet the intemperate outbursts of many of our politicians and some of your correspondents are accepted as commonplace, I almost despair of the future of our society.

Ralph A. Tebbutt

Taken for fools over Rwanda plan

With the announcement recently of a further £290 million spent in the last year on the Rwanda/boat crossings fiasco, does this useless government take the British public to be fools with a loss of memory over this matter?

Currently I am assuming there are millions being spent on Gendames patrolling the French coast and of Border Force, RNLI, RN and RAF operations patrolling the Channel. Millions have been spent on Fortress Calais and still they come!

Tories you are not even looking after the people already living here. I am expected to live on £201 a week, I have paid over my working life £29,000 in National Insurance contributions and am still unable to access NHS dentistry.

Move over Tories and let Daffy Duck take over control.

Tony Wright

Councils being starved of cash

Not many things surprise me nowadays but the article ‘Have your say on plans to sell off Kent's windmills’ certainly did.

Privatising windmills, how very Quixotic. Just about sums up broke Brexit Britain!

For years now, local councils have been starved of central government funding and this is what we here in Kent are reduced to. I read in a quality national paper the other day that close to a third of councils are virtually broke. Yet this woeful government can still waste nearly £300 million and rising on another gimmick, namely sending 200 displaced people to Rwanda.

Goodness only knows how much taxpayers’ money has been wasted since 2016 and that is without the alleged fraud during the pandemic. What fresh insanity will emerge on the horizon next, I ask myself?

Robert Boston

Tories must sort out his mess

Robert Jenrick was correct to say in his resignation letter that there are far too many migrants to integrate into our society as already our schools and health service are busting at the seams and cannot sustain this level of immigration, as well as not enough houses are being built.

Already, we see lawyers of individuals and charities trawling through the Rwanda agreement looking for loopholes in which to circumvent the deal enabling immigrants to avoid deportation. I hear, all too often, about immigrants’ ‘human rights’ but what about our human rights, as it seems we no longer have the right to say who comes into our country.

What is it about a democratic and decent country like France that migrants are prepared to risk their lives by jumping on moving lorries or crossing the world's most dangerous shipping lanes in a rubber boat to get to the UK?

In New York or London, illegal immigrants can melt into the local population with the help of friends and families already here and not get noticed, being able to work in the black markets where they pay no taxes. If that’s not enough, thousands have simply absconded from the clutches of the immigration authorities.

Millions of people are frustrated by the lack of proper action from our government. Surely we have a right, as others do, to speak out about injustices?

The Tories are on a hiding to nothing if they do not sort this out but I suspect that those who are already here will eventually get their visas stamped so they can remain simply because the Home Office cannot be bothered, or are dragging their heels in disapproval.

Sid Anning

Young minds are being poisoned

Most people know of the Holocaust, but many are unable to actually comprehend the reality, as no decent person, raised in a liberal democracy such as the UK, can truly believe that, in living memory, a supposed civilised country was led by demons from hell. Can we, who live in an imperfect but basically tolerant society grasp what it must have been like to be innocent, yet to lose one’s job and possessions, to be treated like dirt and finally to be killed, no matter how good a life you tried to live?

Jewish people were expelled from society, persecuted, and finally murdered merely for the crime of being born. Millions went to the extermination camps. No mercy was shown to any, and they suffered death in all its gruesome forms.

Now we have seen some demonstrators, including children, on these so-called pro-Palestinian marches, waving banners, and chanting that Hitler was right, and that Jews should be in camps. These people shame themselves, and those, who in any way facilitate such actions, are beneath contempt. It is reported that some teachers are encouraging these youngsters, thus making clear just what sort of propagandists in schools are now poisoning the minds of the young. Such people should be dismissed, and prevented from ever again being employed within the profession.

Anti-semites must be prevented from creating widespread roots in the UK.

Colin Bullen

Great fondness for Christmas

Christmas is drawing near but it seems the preparation and run-up to it is brought to the fore too soon.

No doubt it has been driven by retailers anxious to enhance their profit margins in a season which consumers are prone to liberally part with their money.

Thereupon, it's never too early for businesses to take advantage of the climate of goodwill and generosity.

There are even those who have such a fondness for Christmas they haven't the patience to wait a year for the main event.

Andy Park is known as Mr Christmas and has celebrated Christmas every day for the last 14 years with a full roast dinner, champagne and presents. He has sent himself more than 230,000 Christmas cards since his fetish began.

Sending festive cards is also posing a problem as the cost of postage has become a concern for some and it is becoming the norm to send cards via social media, particularly amongst the younger generation who do everything online and aren't interested in dispatching physical cards.

No other festival has engendered as much passion as Christmas; Easter, for all its chocolate confections and bunnies, couldn't hope to compete.

And, to my knowledge, no one has celebrated Easter every day or been egged on to do so.

Michael Smith