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Letters
That would be a convoluted ‘yes’ then from Cllr Flower, in answer to my question on council tax payment [NBV, January 21]. Dorset residents will be funding a council tax payment to Wiltshire after the purchase of St Mary’s. However, I find it difficult to understand that a company, set up by and thereby financed by DCC, is necessary to manage the project. I am just an ordinary retired bloke, brought up on a council estate in South London, with little or indeed no knowledge, of formal accounting. I find this concept difficult to understand. Surely the Council and its employees are financed and rewarded handsomely, certainly in terms of pension contributions, to manage all aspects of council administration. I was under the impression that St Mary’s was being set up as a council facility for the benefit of children with special needs, promoted by DCC as a money-saving and efficiency project. This funded, incidentally, by a significant investment in the purchase of the school. I think the Council outbid David Beckham on his privately-financed venture. How then will this company set up by Dorset, generate profits and from what will it derive its income? Will its employees be paid separately from the Council? As important, will the council tax payers of Dorset be liable for any losses incurred and are they ultimately responsible for underwriting the company and its workings? Creative accounting is clearly a wonderful technique but does not always work out.
Jeremy Bloomfield Gillingham
News from the coop: Lockdown again! No, not you lot this time, you’re coming out of it so I hear and good luck to you. It’s Reg here, from the coop, with my girls, and if you didn’t know we’ve been back on lockdown again since early December. It’s not great is it? We know how you feel but our keeper - well, he’s pretty good to us with plenty of food and water and the odd treat of some greens. Yea, those sprout tops were yummy! Anyway, what’s my point I hear you say. My keeper gets out and about a bit you know and he’s coming back every day with tales of those who aren’t locking their chicks or ducks down. He’s even seen chicks and ducks with their pond on a farm - wandering about outside as usual. Don’t they get it? Whether the keepers like it or not is not really the point; it’s a bit like your lockdown, it’s for our benefit and every chick’s benefit - you’ve got to look out for each other. So thanks to those keepers doing the right thing and to those others - please get with it and put those lockdown measures in place. The sooner we’re all in it together the sooner we can hopefully get back to cruising around our garden as we usually do. Cock-adoodle-do! From Reg, Gertie, Speckly, Red, Titch, Millie, Pearl and Goldie.
(Keeper’s name and address supplied)
The letter from Diana Garner [NBV January 21] attempts to link two completely unconnected subjects. She lists a number of things such as the tracking of financial transactions, cameras in towns, cookies on websites, all of which can plausibly be seen as examples of the surreptitious and seemingly inexorable advance of a surveillance society. This is certainly a worrying development of which we as private citizens should be aware. However, there is no logical link between this and the question of wearing face masks, for which Ms Garner seems to be an enthusiastic advocate even though it could be seen as another manifestation of creeping state control. My own view about mask wearing is that, two years into the pandemic, the small minority who are medically particularly vulnerable or have what are referred to as comorbidities should take whatever steps they think necessary to protect themselves, including wearing masks. However, for the majority of us - and it is a big majority - who are triple-jabbed I feel we should be free to decide for ourselves. It is clear that the current dominant Omicron variant is much milder than previous ones, and no worse in practical terms than the annual winter upsurge of flu, which in bad years can kill many thousands - and no-one has ever suggested compulsory mask-wearing to deal with that. We take it in our stride, and that is what we must do with covid if we are to get our lives back.
Roger White Sherborne
I wonder how many of your readers have been as shocked as I have at the amount of roadside litter across our beautiful area. I can’t begin to imagine what makes the morons, who throw rubbish from their vehicle windows, think it is an acceptable thing to do. We live in one of our lovely villages and debris from the local takeaway places is sadly a regular thing. Like many community-minded citizens I do my best to pick it up and keep things as clean as I can but I can’t cover the whole of the Blackmore Vale! I am sure many of the wonderful volunteer litter pickers feel the same way despite all the sterling work they do. I fully realise that we must hope that education and enforcement work, but the evidence does not back this up. Only yesterday I passed a layby on the way to Shillingstone and there was a very friendly sign urging me to take my litter with me, clearly the message was lost on the users of the layby as it was an absolute disgrace. Many of your readers may not be aware that councils have a statutory duty to clean this mess up. They cannot hide behind covid or
Letters
Cartoon by Lyndon Wall justsocaricatures.co.uk
cutbacks, as they must, by law, clean up areas that you report to them. You can do this report online in a matter of minutes, so I urge all of you who feel the same way to make the most of this facility and help return our roadsides to their natural state.
Steve Anderton Child Okeford
How sad to see my local MP Andrew Murrison, setting himself up as a latter-day witchfinder general as part of the Conservative Party’s phoney war on woke. Mr Murrison has launched a parliamentary group on the National Trust in response to “the intense interest its recent activities have provoked throughout the country”. This intense interest seems to be mainly confined to the pages of newspapers whose readers pine for the days when the sun never set on the British Empire. Mr Murrison is deeply affronted by the Trust’s acknowledgment that many of its great houses were built from the proceeds of slavery (not to mention child labour and mass exploitation of British working people). At the heart of his campaign is his repeated claim that the Trust has besmirched the name of Winston Churchill. I’ve searched in vain for the evidence to support this assertion. There is none. It is a smear invented to grab headlines and rally public support. For Mr Murrison and his pals the Tory version of history must be defended at all costs - regardless of the truth.
Simon Moon Mere
“Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations; as long as you have not shown it to be ‘uneconomic’ you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.” These are the words of Dr EF Schumacher, for many years Chief Economic Advisor to the National Coal Board, in 1973 book Small is Beautiful: a Study of Economics as If People Mattered. Schumacher was an economist of a very different cast to those for whom the bottom line in the accounts is all that matters. As the quotation shows, he saw the importance of criteria other than the simple question: “Does it make a profit?” And despite the initial cost of the expansion of Bristol Airport and the massive investment in HS2, what has swayed the argument is the advice of tunnel-visioned economists that there will be profits in the long run - however long that might be. And along with this outdated accounting system is the mythical belief that the further and faster we travel, the better off we will be. Unfortunately, economists and economically-educated politicians have continued to operate their levers and push their buttons in the belief that there are no limits and that their formulae will deal with any future resource shortages by correspondingly increased prices which in turn will fund the increasingly expensive costs of extracting raw materials from the earth’s crust. I get the distinct impression that it’s not working...
Colin Marsh, Revd Gillingham
Regarding story about Rev William Mortimer. [For Whom the bell tolls, NBV, December 10.] My father Mr Patrick Cox is 82 and lives in Blandford. He was shocked and surprised to see your story about Rev Mortimer. At the time of the accident he was 17 years old and working at Okeford Dairy. He clearly remembers the day and was personally involved. He remembers hearing the church-bell ring once while he was working. Shortly after this two of the school children came to the dairy and said there had been an accident. My father and a co-worker went to the belfry not knowing fully what to expect. They found Rev Mortimer lying on the floor and had to carry him down from the belfry and into the main church. He remembers the day as if it was yesterday and is still affected by it.
