Your letters of cash for MPs, parking apps in the King's Lynn area, Prince Harry and veganism
Here are the letters from this Tuesday's Lynn News...
What a waste of good money
I see that Sky News and ‘Tortoise’ have recently collated a report on the outside funding ( in excess of £17million) given to MPs since the last general election.
According to the report, 14 of those MPs received funding in excess of £250,000 towards their campaigns and causes.
South West Norfolk MP Liz Truss was one of the top three recipients of this largesse, and presumably used it in her campaign to become Britain’s shortest ever serving Prime Minister.
What a complete waste of good money that turned out to be.
Dan O’Connor
Downham
Constituents deserve better
Having successfully overseen the virtual collapse of the economy in her short and embarrassing tenure as PM, Elizabeth Truss, who became virtually invisible to constituents once she took on cabinet responsibilities, now seems to have vanished.
MPs earn £84,144 a year for serving their constituents. So far this year she has claimed £9,735.89 in expenses – more than a full state pension which will be the annual income of many SW Norfolk constituents. For what?
Adding insult to injury, she is now entitled to claim up to £115,000 in expenses for ‘civic duties’ for the rest of her life. I very much doubt she will be in demand as an after dinner speaker but this is tax payers’ money and could surely be put to better use.
The people of South West Norfolk deserved better.
Rebecca Elliott
via email
Why the extra 20p for using the app?
Can anyone please explain to me, preferably a member of West Norfolk Council, why you have to pay an extra 20p convenience charge when paying for parking in our council car parks using the designated Parking Ops mobile app.
This might be naivety on my part but surely it should be a 20p discount for the convenience of a person not having to collect, count and bank all the coins used in the car park machines, or better still encouraging everyone to pay by their phone so expensive machines and their maintenance can be done away with altogether.
If I was a more cynical person I might just think it’s just another way for our council to suck extra money from our pockets when parking in town.
Ed Brownbill
Pott Row
Diana would have steered him from unhappiness
Blame has been apportioned to the therapy given to Prince Harry for his ongoing problems.
At source there was a missing component to his counselling as Meghan didn’t participate, with a dual attendance pivotal to a successful outcome.
The Duchess of Sussex was too proud and arrogant to embrace the essence of joint responsibility in marriage with a misconception that she can do no wrong.
It comes as no surprise to me at this failure to rehabilitate the Prince, as one who has been part of counselling in public sector employment in the past.
Paid professionals have a clinical code of practice full of restrictions, where job worthiness supersedes compassion to the detriment of clients.
Interview rooms are soulless and aloof, and I have memories of a table with a timing clock set for 60 minutes, not to be overrun as there was someone else to be advised next, like a treadmill in formation.
It had an air of a victim’s life ticking away, very off putting, and it would have been unhelpful to Prince Harry, if he was being clocked.
Harry missed out in his formative years with the tragic death of his mother Princess Diana who in all probability would have steered him away from an unhappy future.
The loving care of a mother with her arms around him would have spoken the language which programmed words couldn’t from a distance. A hands on approach in
politically correct counselling would be misconstrued as ‘harassment’, such is the slippery slope that ‘progressive’ mental treatment has gone down, consequential to a brittle society.
There is a way back for Prince Harry into the Royal fold, but he must be repentant of his past mistakes and his father King Charles and brother Prince William should exercise Christian forgiveness with restoration and rebuilding, but will Meghan accept this? I have my doubts. This is something which the counselling industry cannot compete with, and only went on the ascendency consistent with the breakdown in traditional families with nanny state filling the void, plus an agenda of exacerbating snowflakery, and failing to differentiate between right and wrong. A sound bite of New Labour was ‘no fault’ and look at the mess the country is in now.
David Fleming
Downham
Stop badgering me with your preferences
As an avid reader of this newspaper I’m increasingly finding myself being badgered by a phalanx of Lynn News staff and contributors who seem to think that it’s time I was updated by their various food fads, eco leanings and dietary peccadillos.
Jenny Beake doggedly persists in banging both a vegan drum as well as a clear objection to the delights of alcohol ‘ad nauseam’.
Cllr Paul Kunes and the ‘Eco Shed’ guy keep pushing their battery-car agenda while both Rebekah Chilvers and Lucy Carter have also written about their decisions to climb aboard the vegan bus.
And to cap it all we get endless updates from Mr Turnstone who’s clearly determined to ‘guilt trip’ us from his coastal news soapbox into adopting animal-free diets if he can.
Please, please, please can you give us a break from all this wokery and virtue signalling. It’s a free country and I’m happy for you all to munch endless ‘meat free’ options and drink fizzy water and drive electric cars but frankly it isn’t news and it isn’t really very entertaining when it’s so relentless. Sorry to be so grumpy but can you give it a rest please?
Steve Mackinder
Denver
EDITOR: Mr Mackinder, this month is ‘Dry January’ and ‘Veganuary’.
Jenny has written one comment piece and conducted one interview about abstinence. Lucy and Jenny, who are meat eaters, are taking part in Veganuary in order to write stories and features on the subject.
A good newspaper covers topical issues, and that’s what these reporters are doing.
Rhetoric is patronising and boring
As a vegetarian of over 30 years I enjoyed reading the article on January 10 by Lucy Carter ‘I’m doing Veganuary and don’t miss brie’.
It was an honest report from someone who doesn’t necessarily want to give up eating meat but decided to try
veganism, and gave an honest account of how it was for her. She talked about how she was shocked at how tasty the substitutes were and how she felt a difference in her physical health.
It didn’t take long for one of your regular contributors to Viewpoint (January 20) to find reasons to contradict her
article including the words “followers of these food fads”.
Yes, I accept, as the writer said, there are beetles, bugs, frogs, aphids, spiders and mice that live in the fields of carrots and lettuces that are harvested, but I chose not to eat meat from animals that end their lives in abattoirs.
That is my choice and my right to choose.
I have never heard a vegetarian or a vegan take pot jokes at meat eaters or lecture them on how misguided they are – however, it’s a common occurrence when it’s the other way round. It’s patronising and boring, please give it a rest.
Sue Bruce
Lynn
