Your letters

Supporting businesses

Sir, — I am sure many readers are aware of the dire financial position faced by many shops and small businesses in our community. Footfall is down as is the spending power which particularly hurts all those in hospitality and entertaining. These businesses are the backbone of our local community.

Our MP and councillors, at all levels of local government, should be doing all they can to support them. Instead of which at a national level the increases in the minimum wage and employer’s NI have added huge costs resulting in a reluctance to take on new staff and a disincentive to invest. Then we have the November budget and what disasters will that bring?

On a local level the constant street closures are having a detrimental effect discouraging visitors. What isn’t obvious is what our councillors are doing to minimise disruption by co-ordinating repairs and ensuring all work is carried out as quickly as possible.

In Buckinghamshire, the county council takes active measures to reduce unnecessary disruption. An example is by prohibiting temporary traffic lights setting up on a Friday with work scheduled for the following Monday. Are Thames Water being hassled to complete their work ASAP? It would be good to know what active measures to help local business are being taken, if any.

The only party with pro-business instincts in its bones is the Conservative Party. I say this with apologies for the last government, which correctly having supported businesses and individuals through covid, then chose to extend taxes rather than cut expenditure to pre-covid levels. — Yours faithfully,

Tim Davies

Chairman, Henley Conservatives

Remember to shop local

As we enter the autumn season and with Christmas just around the corner, I wanted to take this opportunity of reminding the good people of Henley how important it is to support your local independents.

There is so much uncertainty right now with regards to our economic climate — no one knows quite what’s going to happen and how it will affect our pockets and it’s tough for so many small businesses and none more so than those on the high street.

I have been fortunate to have had my shop in Henley for more than 14 years, survived the burdens of lockdowns during covid and must thank all of my customers for their continued support over this time. Without you I would not still be here.

Independent shops are the hub of any high street and without them our lovely town would not be as it is. So, please keep supporting us and keep shopping local. — Yours faithfully,

Laurence Morris

Laurence Menswear, Duke Street, Henley

Will bridge be repaired?

Sir, — On September 18 I received an email from the River Thames Harbour Master outlying the Environment Agency’s intention to invest £19.8m on essential works to maintain and improve key navigation infrastructure along the non-tidal River Thames.

The programme is to focus upon the repair, maintenance and replacement of critical assets including 45 locks, towpath bridges and pleasure navigation facilities.

I replied to this notification to enquire whether Marsh Lock Horsebridge would be included in this programme and beyond an acknowledgement of receipt I have heard nothing further.

It would be good to know if there is any intention to repair this essential bridge? — Yours faithfully,

Christopher Laing

Lashbrook Road, Lower Shiplake

Best employ traffic warden

I believe that Henley is among one of the wealthiest towns in the South East.

If that is so, surely even a part-time traffic warden could be employed to slap a few parking tickets on cars that are parked illegally?

Hopefully this would stop the problem. Having said that, I still do not understand why these large trucks are allowed to drive through the town. — Yours faithfully,

Chrissie Godfrey

Victoria Court, Henley

Lessons from across pond

What a fuss is being made about the USA’s political gyrations! Some 50 years ago I was taught in my political science degree that forms of government were always changing. Sometimes this was for the better and sometimes for the worse. The simple truth is that human organisation cannot remain constant as human attitudes or requirements both physical and emotional do not remain constant.

Then it occurred to me to do a little research using our new GenAI wonder tools. According to GenAI there are across the world less than 50 per cent of the population living under a form of government which could be considered in any way democratic.

The number of people in the USA is about four-and-a-half per cent of the world’s population and the fact that they are going through a shift in political outlook should not be considered a gigantic change in the political climate of the planet.

Furthermore, one occasionally hears the pre-Trump USA system being referred to as the American experiment and indeed their Republican form of government has been just that, an experiment, which now appears not to have been such a great success. When looked at carefully democracy has one fatal fault line which the Trump government is currently making the most of.

A democracy requires the population to be tolerant of all the interests of the different people living within its boundary. An attitude of accommodation of diversity is one of the keys to successful democracy. But one of the groups of people living in any country will be those who are by their very nature intolerant of everyone else’s interests. Thus, the act of being tolerant of the intolerant has a built-in self-destruction. Maybe that is the reason why democracy has had such a short lifespan so far.

GenAI suggests that democracy has been evolving over the past 350 years. Recorded human history is about 5,000 years old. Thus, democratic ideas have only been on our radar for about seven per cent of our so-called civilised history.

Is there a lesson for us from what is happening in the USA? Forms of government are prone to change. To achieve relative stability in a form of government one has to work very hard to ensure that those who wish to undermine it do not succeed.

But, alas, there are many different ideas as to how government should be composed and how it should function and success in keeping the current status is very difficult indeed and maybe not all that desirable, anyway. This comes back again to one’s point of view.

I am reminded of the line in the popular song sung by Doris Day, in the Fifties, “Que sera, sera”. The words were, “What will be, will be”! — Yours faithfully,

Dan Remenyi

Kidmore End

What rights do we have?

Sir, — Of all the pieces of text I have read none seem to echo more truth than these words from April 29, 1933. “There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England.”

Winston Churchill stood in 1924 as an English Constitutionalist. He condemned and walked away from the mainstream parties; condemned them for seeking to destroy the English Constitution.

Churchill and 10 others all stood as English Constitutionalists. Six won their seats, because the people of England knew we had a constitution; a powerful and everlasting constitution that protected the individuals’ rights over the state.

Labour, Liberals and even the Conservatives have made it their mission to dismantle the laws and subvert the rights enshrined in documents like the Bill of Rights 1689 or the Act of Settlement 1700 in order to enslave the nation.

Up through the Fifties and Sixties and into the early Seventies, English schools generally included teaching about the English constitution, citizens’ rights, parliamentary local government etc, either as part of exam syllabuses or within social studies and general studies.

Then, in the mid-Seventies (coincidentally with our entry into the Common Market) there was a shift. Social studies and general studies began to decline, exam syllabuses dropped or diluted “British Constitution” and fewer schools treated civic/constitutional rights as a required element.

The fix was in. The British have no rights and England is a dirty word — just as the Greatest Briton told us almost a century ago. — Yours faithfully,

Edward Sierpowski

Henley

Last word on flags

Sir, — Apologies for again writing to you on this matter. I do so only to correct the inaccuracy in the response provided (Standard, October 2) from Henley Town Council that said “The flagpole on the town hall is not available for hire…” and that “Smaller flagpoles… on buildings around Market Place are not for hire”.

All the evidence would indicate they in fact are for hire.

In emails to me, the council states that “The four flagpoles at the edge of the Market Place are booked through us” and that “We don’t stipulate what can or can’t be put up”.

If none of said flagpoles are for hire, then to which flagpoles do the council’s “flagpole booking form” pertain and to which flagpoles does said correspondence refer? — Yours faithfully,

Davide Ferrara

Makins Road, Henley