Viewpoint: Fireworks really aren't such a whizzing idea

Email Viewpoint letters tojamesp@baylismedia.co.ukor write to Viewpoint, Newspaper House, 48 Bell Street, Maidenhead, SL6 1HX.

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Fireworks really aren’t such a whizzing idea

So here it is yet again.

It’s that awful time of year when it’s quite ok to let bombs off in your back garden at any time of the day or night.

It was bad enough when it was just Guy Fawkes Night, but now we have Diwali for added misery.

Last night (Monday) I cycled with a friend back from Windsor to Maidenhead along the Jubilee River.

It’s usually a pleasant night time ride.

But this time it was like riding through a war zone.

I noticed even the birds were stressed and were flying around, even though it was pitch black.

This nonsense will go on at least until November 5.

What the hell is wrong with our MPs?

When will you finally ban the sale of high explosives to the general public?

Organised displays are fine and give people a lot of fun, but it cannot be right to sell high explosives to all and sundry to explode when and wherever the fancy takes them.

How often have you been just about to fall asleep after midnight when suddenly all hell breaks loose and wakes you while you wait for the next block of explosions.

Fireworks are also used in demos.

People throw them at the police.

They are sometimes used to intimidate people at that awful American import, Trick or Treat.

All kinds of animals including dogs, cats and particularly animals like horses, who are outside, are massively stressed by these massive explosions.

Some even have to be put down.

But that’s ok isn’t it?

Because it’s Hindu culture, it’s British tradition.

I once appealed in person to my then MP, Dominic Grieve, to ban the sale of fireworks to the general public, but he said it was tradition.

In the case of Guy Fawkes it remembers a bloke who was hung drawn and quartered for trying to blow up parliament over 400 years ago.

What’s more, any new law to prohibit the sale of fireworks to the general public would actually be easily enforceable - unlike the existing law that profits the times when they can be let off.

In the past it wasn’t so bad because fireworks simply were nowhere near as loud as they are now.

These days they literally sound like bombs.

I’m going to copy this to our local MP, Theresa May. If you feel as strongly as I do, please also write to her.

MALCOLM STRETTEN

Boulters Lane

Maidenhead

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Criticism and a service that just doesn’t cut it

Thank you to the ’Tiser for reporting on RBWM’s decision to pay their grounds maintenance contractor (Tivoli) an extra £200,000.

I called out this decision at a recent meeting on the Royal Borough’s cabinet where councillors agreed to the increase despite a consistent poor record of poor performance when it comes to maintaining open spaces and cemeteries.

The lead member responsible (Cllr David Coppinger) used Viewpoint earlier this month to justify this decision.

只是你的读者可能会感到惊讶ification for this decision was not to improve the maintenance but to largely keep it at current levels while looking at stopping grass cutting in some areas etc.

Cllr Coppinger and one of his colleagues are clearly unhappy with my intervention and feel it necessary to criticise me personally to justify their actions.

While this is a sad state of affairs it will not stop me from calling out poor decision making by our councillors.

Your readers will make up their own mind on the quality of grounds maintenance in the Royal Borough.

It is clear to me that awarding an extra £200,000 to a firm that is not meeting service levels is not what residents would expect or deserve. RBWM clearly think differently – they are putting Tivoli first and residents last.

ED WILSON

Bryer Place

Windsor

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Water doesn’t always go with the flow

The 10-year-old waterways development plan (award winning) is strong on bringing the Thames into Maidenhead.

通过观察,一加仑Cookham泰晤士河water on its way south gets tangled up in reeds, sinks via silt through permeable channel beds, is shunted into dead end creeks, dragged into vegetation growing out of plastic netting put in to support the embankments, slowed up by whirlpools from surface water outfalls from roadside drains, is pushed northwards into Moor Cut by the weir until it finally gets to Bray Cut Basin.

What remains of our gallon, is then hit with Maidenhead’s washing machines and lavatories running at 200 litres per second from the treatment plant outfall.

Since much of the flow comes from farmers’ fields/rainfall and so we don’t breach the Trade Descriptions Act, I suggest our advertising is re-named ‘Bring Maidenhead’s Water into The Thames’.

MDG

Forlease Drive

Maidenhead

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Whither Dudley, Truss and accountability?

I spent most of last weekend trying to come to terms with the events unfolding at Westminster.

The Conservative parliamentary party, having rid itself of two Prime Ministers in less than two months, invented a way of selecting yet another, which, as it turned out, required no one to actually vote for the winner! Saves on all that pesky counting, doesn’t it!

As this was the most likely outcome after Boris Johnson withdrew from the process, it became urgently necessary to create a narrative that conferred legitimacy upon a future Rishi Sunak premiership.

The chosen Sunak-booster was the current Home Secretary, Grant Shapps.

His argument was that he and the other 356 Conservative MPs drew their mandate from the 2019 General Election, which returned them to Parliament.

He also pointed out that a Sunak administration would revert to the core of the manifesto upon which all Conservative candidates stood in that election.

So, the legitimacy runs from the manifesto, through the election of a majority that stood on that manifesto and then onto their chosen leader, who they are free to select and de-select as often as they wish.

And, as far as our wretchedly inadequate constitution goes, he’s quite right.

But that leaves him with a problem. It’s this:

If his argument establishes Sunak’s legitimacy as Prime Minister, then it throws into sharp focus that the brief Prime Ministership of Liz Truss was effectively a coup d’état.

Throughout the parliamentary and party phases of her election as leader of the Conservative Party, it was made abundantly clear that she would tear the 2019 Manifesto up and start again.

Under Shappsian theory, this would be unconstitutional.

Yet, 113 Tory MPs and later, 81,326 Conservative Party members voted to make her Prime Minister.

Assuming those MPs voted consistently in the membership ballot, I make that a grand total of 81,325 co-conspirators.

I am giving Liz Truss the benefit of my very considerable doubt and concluding she was sufficiently aware of what was going to have voted for herself!

我想知道内政大臣,responsible for National Security, thinks should happen to all these conspirators?

Now, it is possible that all this chicanery was inspired by events closer to home.

Former RBWM council leader Simon Dudley came to power after internally unseating the previous leader, David Burbage post-2015 Borough elections.

Further, Cllr Andrew Johnson, the current leader of the council succeeded internally, after Mr Dudley’s still unexplained midnight flit in September 2019.

It’s heartening to know that, at least as regards a lack of openness and transparency and Geller-esque truth bending skills, our local Tories may have taught their senior brethren a thing or two.

That makes me very proud.

Cllr JOHN BALDWIN

Lib Dem, Belmont

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Party trashed the rule of law as well as logic

Few would disagree with D R Cooper’s observation that Liz Truss has created ‘such havoc so quickly’ (Viewpoint, October 20).

While the Convict, aka Boris Johnson, will largely be remembered for being an unrepentant liar, his successor as PM is a hypocrite of the highest order, ditching her sensible pro EU principles to attain the top job in British politics as voted for by the crusty old Tory Party members.

The deterioration of the Conservative Party was inevitable once it decided to incorporate the values of UKIP in order to win the 2019 general election.

With the help of the elitist Tory press, it attempted to stomp all over the rule of law. Remember the chilling ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE headline from the Daily Mail, never a stranger to extreme right wing autocracy.

Brexit proved to the Tories that telling lies would do nothing to deter a large minority of voters as long as emotions took pride of place over any kind of logic.

With even D R Cooper, one of Brexit's most obstinate apologists, admitting it has adverse effects, what many young and intelligent people are wondering is when politicians from the two best supported political parties will join the Lib Dems, Green Party and SNP in telling the truth about the dishonesty and disgrace surrounding the referendum itself and the negotiations which have left the UK isolated and poorer.

The Conservative Party faces a very uncertain future because of division.

It’s a division caused by lies, and the catalyst for that was Brexit.

JAMES AIDAN

Sutton Road

Cookham

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‘Conservative and Unionist’ is party name

Without waiting to see who gets to lead the so-called ‘Conservative and Unionist’ party, it is interesting to observe how many of its MPs support the man who put a trade barrier between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Dr D R COOPER

Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead