Our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent and beyond.

Some letters refer to past correspondence which can be found by clicking here. Join the debate by emailing letters@thekmgroup.co.uk

Grow more food here instead of building

In a country that can't feed itself, we are losing land hand over fist every year, to the sea, to crazy re-wilding schemes, to building, re-flooding ancient 'wetlands' that we have spent hundreds of years draining (for the very logical reason of gaining more agricultural land so that we might have some food).

This country is going nuts. We only produce about half the food we need.

‘Oh, we can import the rest...' Yes. All very well for the exporters over there but supposing someone cuts off our supply lines, disrupts the sea lanes?

It won't happen? The Houthi are having a good go now – and they are small fry.

A startling statistic: Less than 1% of people in Britain now work on the land. Farming should be our number one priority. We should all be digging for victory as there is always a war on want.

All very well celebrating extra wetlands for migrating birds; the trouble is they brought in bird flu again this year, with the disease spreading to domestic fowl, resulting in untold numbers having to be put down.

Poor old farmers. Still, we can celebrate our ever-growing human population can't we and keep on building 300,000 houses every year, until we concrete over the entire island.

We need to get rid of all the bonkers ideas swirling around and meet in the middle. More work, more agriculture, more manufacturing, more personal responsibility. Less 'me me me' and a lot more community.

Robert Cambridge

Let pupils learn at their own pace

I read with interest the recent excellent letter from John Cooper on the subject of hiring 11-plus tutors.

An increase in demand to prepare pupils for Kent and Medway Test exams, plus achieving the best GCSE results possible for secondary level students, has led to the development of a number of so-called tuition centres, often managed by business people and not education specialists.

The level of high fees charged by these centres further increases the gap between those students progressing well due to affordability and those who are achieving at a slower pace, without the same level of income.

Another unfortunate situation that is increasing, is that young people pass the Kent or Medway test due to sums of money invested in preparation but then struggle to keep up with the learning pace once at a grammar school, through not having the required levels of natural ability.

Kent is blessed with many high-achieving schools and academies that give so much to our young people. Let them learn at their own pace and enjoy school life.

Parents will also have some money to spend on other needs for their children. There is no substitute for school life!

John Harmer

Too much emphasis placed on university

I completely agree with John Cooper’s comments against the opinion that “11-plus tutors are a waste of money”.

That a former KCC education advisor should make such an outlandish statement beggars belief. I can only assume that Simon Webb is of the opinion that the education system is perfect and can allow for all the vagaries of teachers' ability and a child’s social environment.

My opinion is that too much kudos has been placed on getting a place in a grammar school, going on to university and obtaining a degree. The result has been that alternative traditional routes of learning, such as apprenticeships, were almost abandoned. This has led to a shortage of competent tradesmen, causing their wages to spiral, whilst some degree holders struggle to obtain work. There needs to be a better balance between allowing pupils to follow their natural abilities and pushing for high examination markings.

The status of a university education is now so deeply ingrained that I cannot see any change in the short term. Neither can I see any easy solution as to how to select those most suitable to receive it. In theory, comprehensive schools should be the answer but with such large numbers of pupils needed to allow the range of subjects the problems of lack of identity, gang culture and transport, for example, this is far from ideal.

I passed the 11-plus but struggled, there was never a thought about the possibility of going to university and I left at 16. However, obtaining a good apprenticeship and with day release and evening classes I did not do so badly.

Brian Barnard

Police department deserves praise for vital work

I would like to congratulate Chris Britcher for his informative article about the Kent police officers who trawl through offensive images in order to help put child abusers in prison.

It threw light on the work of the dedicated team who did this work and tracked down the perpetrators and customers who, as he said ‘seek out the material in the darkest recesses of the internet’.

It struck me that, with some police officers elsewhere in Britain attracting bad publicity for the police of late, the work of Kent’s Paedophile Online Investigation Team was an excellent example of the dedication with which they tackle their often upsetting work. I was particularly struck by the officer who said it was the best job she’d had in the police and she knew she was making a difference and that, little by little, she was helping to make Kent a safer place.

Looking into the future I found the advent of the use of AI to create life-like images and content, often at least partially based on real children and their adult abusers, particularly disturbing. Apparently, at the moment it is still possible to pick up clues to identify them, but the police fear that in future it will become impossible or at least very difficult to do this.

On another note, I found the use of ‘digital dogs’ intriguing. It was yet another example of dogs being our best friends with them being trained to sniff out SIM cards and tiny SD cards and USB sicks, carrying evidence of abuse, in the same way that dogs are trained to sniff out drugs. When it comes to animals, Chris Britcher wondered if the ‘pets corner’ with photos of the staff’s pets, in the police team’s office, were put up as an antidote to the appalling images they faced in their work.

All in all the article threw a spotlight on the behind-the-scenes work of this little known but incredibly important police department whose personnel are to be congratulated for the extremely difficult work they do.

John Cooper

Minority have always paraded extreme slogans

Colin Bullen complains about the radical slogans on the pro-Palestinian marches; such have been a feature for many years by certain sections, before the current appalling situation.

Many protest marches and demonstrations have always had those who make more extreme slogans, though usually only a minority.

As for education, Mr Bullen may not be aware that Holocaust studies have been a feature of age-appropriate lessons to secondary students for many years now. Indeed, at the annual Holocaust Memorial Day events in January, most are attended by a selection of students to speak of what they have learned.

I support a sustainable ceasefire and that the major powers, despite the obvious difficulties, start the process of negotiating for the two-state solution long proposed. This would also likely require decades of UN peacekeeping once achieved.

Ray Duff

Lack of backbone over protests

I for one was not in the least surprised that the Met Police stood by and did nothing as pro-Palestinian protesters used lasers to project their anti-Semitic mantra ‘From the River to the Sea’ onto Big Ben.

The failure of the Metropolitan Police to clamp down on the anti-Israeli marches that have plagued the capital (and other cities) since Hamas slaughtered more than a thousand Israeli citizens in an unprovoked attack on October 7 last year is borne of the same cowardly mentality displayed by Greater Manchester Police that allowed predominantly Asian grooming gangs to get away with the sexual abuse of underage girls between 2004 and 2015, for fear of ‘upsetting’ the wider Asian community.

On their ‘Scales of Justice’, the grooming and abuse of a few vulnerable young white girls was of little import when compared to keeping the wider community happy.

No one should be subjected to hatred because of their race, religion or sexuality. But recent action, or inaction, by our guardians of the law when dealing with the ongoing protests demonstrates (pun intended) that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, like his recent predecessors, is totally lacking in backbone.

Bob Readman

Ignoring threats is a recipe for disaster

Your correspondent John Helm is incredibly naive in his opinions concerning defence, while apparently lacking knowledge of past historical events.

He believes that we can survive by just ignoring the increasing threats posed by totalitarian states, and leaving allies to sink or swim as they are able.

We went to war in 1914 to defend Belgium neutrality, while in 1939 it was because of Hitler’s attack on Poland, so one must assume that in Mr Helm’s view we should have just sat back and done nothing, although eventually as Churchill said “an appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last”.

A quote from Leon Trotsky is apposite: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you”. as it encapsulates the foolishness of thinking that one can avoid conflict by adopting the ostrich-like posture of burying one’s head in the sand.

My wife and I recently saw the new Holocaust film The Zone of Interest which horrifyingly illustrates how the majority of people in a nation can abandon human decency in the cause of an evil ideology, while watching, or reading, any biography of Stalin, makes clear how one man could deliberately terrify a population, and engineer the deaths of tens of millions, through starvation and mass murder in a political cause.

The world is not civilised Britain writ large, but contains nations led by those who think nothing of killing unlimited numbers and are willing to attack other countries in pursuit of their ambitions.

Unless we were to follow North Korea into turning the UK into an armed camp then, if we are to survive, we need friends and allies to stand by our side in defence of our values, and this involves responding to more than just overt military attacks on our own country. Mr Helm’s suggestion that we do nothing until that eventuality occurs is a recipe for disaster.

Colin Bullen

Are lessons really learned from inquiries?

One phrase that to me rings hollow and seems to have become a cliche when public inquiries are brought to a close is 'lessons have been learned'.

If it's designed to put the public’s mind at rest and provide answers and remedy to those affected by whatever circumstances have initiated an inquiry, then I can only conclude that it doesn't resolve matters enough to a satisfactory extent.

Few buy into the belief that 'lessons have been learned,' since no one is held accountable for any wrongdoing or failures on their part.

The huge costs and length of time involved to get all the facts out into the open usually falls short of providing an adequate outcome of the matter under review.

Michael Smith