Fix bridge urgently

This is an open letter about the ongoing saga regarding the repair of the Marsh Lock Horsebridge in Henley.

As agent for the landowners, who have provided temporary access across their land in order to help with the issues caused by the closure of the footpath, I am becoming increasingly convinced, and concerned, that by offering a temporary solution, we have inadvertently created a situation whereby people who should be sorting out this problem are in fact “putting it on the back burner”.

We cannot see anything being done about this other than it being passed from one department to another.

Ownership of the bridge is, apparently, being questioned by the Environment Agency.

If ownership is questioned, under what authority was it closed in the first place? How far has this issue been taken politically?

The agency has said it is liaising with Wokingham Borough Council and Oxfordshire County Council — how is that progressing?

Has the allocation of Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ grant aid funding been made and is it being chased up on a regular basis?

It appears to me that this whole sorry saga is indicative of the reluctant approach to projects like this by government departments in general.

It seems ridiculous that we cannot get a relatively small project like this sorted out quickly and efficiently.

I make no apologies for sounding frustrated — I am. —Yours faithfully,

Alex Dick

Estate manager, Culden Faw Estate

Day of ‘the pub’ gone

Editor, — The open letter from the Crays Pond Community Group to John Howell MP (Standard, August 25) deserves a response.

The community group apparently consists of three people who have registered a community interest company, White Lion Crays Pond CIC Ltd.

We have lived in Crays Pond for more than 50 years and it is clear that the group has very little local support.

It has been asking for donations to its fighting fund for years but, according to Companies House, has collected precisely nothing.

The group’s letter was misleading in the history that it presented.

For a number of years, the pub appeared to be successful. It presented a good menu with a reasonable number of customers.

However, the success was achieved by the licensees working themselves into the ground. Following their departure, successive tenants have tried to make a go of it.

The Crays Pond Community Group implies that the owners deliberately employed incompetent licensees with a view to running the pub down so that they could sell it for other purposes.

At least one of these “incompetent” licensees has made a success of another pub in the area.

As we understand it, the current owner Satwinder Sandhu had previously turned around another failing pub in the area and consulted as many previous White Lion licensees as he could.

He was assured that, like many pubs, it was no longer viable.

When the pub first started trading, there were no televisions, no motor cars and no possibility of local residents finding entertainment elsewhere.

The day of the “pub” has gone. Nearly all successful pubs are now actually restaurants and we are not underprovided in the area.

Pubs are closing everywhere. Community centres are now provided by village halls (as in Woodcote and Whitchurch Hill), which give a much more focused service than pubs.

The “community group” is now offering a ridiculous sum (£300,000) for the pub, which is a fraction of the site’s worth and half what it cost. A very small plot nearby went for £300,000.

The group is doing everything it can to frustrate Mr Sandhu so that it can get the site for a song.

The members may be sincere but once they had the pub, they could go through the motions of resurrecting it while building on the rest of the site.

Mr Sandhu’s family were turfed out of the pub so that it could not be insured while he worked on renovating it.

Effectively, by opposing Mr Sandhu at every step of the way, the group has created a stalemate and left the site to rot. Why is it not working with Mr Sandhu to provide a community centre and limited housing urgently needed in the area?

Where does it propose to get £300,000 from, when it has nothing in the bank?

There are no limits on the salaries and dividends that a CIC company can offer. Who will provide the £300,000 it is offering and who will profit from the investment?

The proposed change in the law may enable small vested interest groups to seize control of valuable assets which they can then exploit for profit.

Before we cave in to the “Campaign for pubs”, we need to support actions for “Campaign for hospitals”, “Campaign for swimming pools” and numerous other more worthy causes. — Yours faithfully,

Bill Johns

Goffs Hill, Crays Pond

Depressing discoveries

Some weeks ago, Henley Rotary Club and various partners across the Thames Valley conducted a “plastic blitz” in which we cleaned 35.5 miles of the river and its banks in order to see what kind of trash is polluting them. The results are in.

Overall, 52 groups collected a staggering 698 large bin bags of rubbish.

The largest single polluters were bottle caps, food packaging and cigarette butts. (The latter are not, as widely supposed, biodegradable but are packed with microplastics).

The 20 local people who volunteered with Henley Rotary Club collected 15 bags between our locks, only two bags of which contained recyclable items. Indeed, 50 per cent of what we picked up was plastic that would otherwise be destined to float in our rivers and seas for hundreds of year with their microplastics getting into the food chain.

This is depressing to say the least. We need to protect our environment. — Yours faithfully,

Phil Fletcher

Sonning Common

French word exchange

Sir, — So the worldwide chaos last week in air traffic was the fault of the French?

Traditionally we have always blamed the French and vice versa.

Even well-established expressions in both languages reflect the same: for example, the French “conge anglais” means to “take French leave” and there are many other expressions in the same vein. — Yours faithfully,

Enid Light

Wargrave Road, Henley

Unwanted invader

Sir, — It is always good to read through the letters sent in by local people and those who live further away.

I refer to the letter and photograph from Sharon Hewitt, of Wargrave, under the heading “Ladybird hitched lift on my shoe” (Standard, August 25).

This was in fact a Harlequin ladybird (Harmonia axyridis), which is a non-native species originally from Asia. It has become a very invasive species in the UK, particularly threatening our native red ladybirds by eating their eggs and larvae as well as the two species competing for food.

Not liking cold weather, Harlequins can often be found in houses and other buildings where they hibernate, often around window frames, unlike native ladybirds which prefer to tuck themselves into ivy-clad trees or other outdoor shrubs to see the winter months out.

I was sorry to see Terry Allsop’s picture of a horse near Ewelme with flies on its head and mane, which must be a great irritant to the animal, particularly around the eyes.

I am not a horse owner but know there are various methods to keep flies off horses. This year must have been particularly bad for flies with the hot summer. — Yours faithfully,

Diana Jackson

Ipsden

Cartoons, not cruelty

Editor, — I am writing about Robert Jenrick’s order to paint over children’s cartoon murals at UK asylum intake centres.

It has been a month since the campaign to restore the cartoons was launched.

We won’t give up on this issue and I wanted to explain why.

A cartoon mural could provide a moment of escape for a child during a distressing time. This was taken away from them and we can’t ignore this.

The cartoons have become symbolic of immigration policies that fail the most vulnerable in our society — and with no benefit.

The Government said the cartoons were “too welcoming”, then that they were not “age-appropriate”.

But its own inspection reports show that young children pass through these centres. We need to set things right and show these children that we see them.

To readers who support the Cartoons Not Cruelty campaign, sign the Change.org petition. It has already been backed by 120,000 people. — Yours faithfully,

Ian Helmore

Twyford

My wife is the best

Sir, — I would like to thank you for an excellent article on my “retirement” from the Greyhound, a free house (Standard, August 25).

Unfortunately, there was a glaring omission on my part. It is said that “behind every successful man stands a great woman” or words to that effect.

I would rewrite those words to say “beside every successful man stands a great woman” and I had the best — my wife Jacinta, without whom the Greyhound would not have been as successful as it was.

We were a great team, creating a family of staff that lived by our slogan “Food, wine and happiness”.

Jacinta created that happy welcome, so important in the hospitality industry.

Over the two decades we had the Greyhound, Jay trained our front of house team to give more than just service, she wanted the staff to enjoy the company of the customers and the customers to enjoy the company of the staff.

She didn’t want robots working for us, she wanted real people who could let their personalities shine through.

Without exception, she achieved that goal with all the amazing staff we employed over the years.

Jacinta, I couldn’t have done it without you. — Yours faithfully,

Antony Worrall Thompson

The Greyhound, Peppard

Why sexist imbalance?

Sir, — Your extended coverage of GCSE results in local co-educational secondary schools (Standard, September 1) included photographs of 35 girls and only six boys. Why was there this sexist imbalance?

Even more irritating was the usual picture of a group of girls “jumping with joy”.

Apart from the fact that boys are also capable of jumping, I assume that the action was merely at the request of the photographer. — Yours faithfully,

Yvonne Kedge

Lea Road, Sonning Common

Night-time barking

Sir, — I am daily reminded of the childhood nursery rhyme which begins: “Hark hark the dogs do bark…”

It must have been set in Shiplake any time from 3am onwards every day. — Yours faithfully,

David Gealy

Baskerville Lane, Shiplake