Viewpoint: Wrong decision to postpone football matches?

Email Viewpoint letters to jamesp@baylismedia.co.uk or write to Viewpoint, Newspaper House, 48 Bell Street, Maidenhead, SL6 1HX.

The wrong decision to postpone football

The Government had given a dictum concerning national mourning stating that there is no obligation to cancel or postpone events or sporting fixtures.

So rugby, cricket and golf were played over the weekend, but no football.

Postponed purely about ‘respect’.

The Football League announcement came just over 24 hours until the first weekend fixture, with all clubs having planned for matches to take place (and an international place in Manchester on Thursday evening), so an entire economy of freelance workers, casual labour and employees on zero-hours contracts, suddenly being told they would not be working over the weekend.

Tens of thousands of fans had made travel plans, and because of the Premier League’s international popularity, many fans also were due to come from abroad.

And there were cancellations of football for kids and schools, with many other sports carrying on as normal.

The Football Supporters Association said that it was an opportunity missed for football to pay its own special tributes.

A chance for clubs fans to get together for one minute’s silence to reflect on the Queen and other loved ones who may have passed away.

When all elements are weighed up, including what actually constitutes ‘respect’, it is difficult not to conclude that football made the wrong decision.

BRUCE ADAMS

Cox Green Lane

Maidenhead

Highlighting the value of our greenspaces

I read with dismay the article in last week’s Advertiser: ‘Land value of Magnet Leisure Centre site plummets by millions’.

Over 40 per cent of the value has been wiped off, leaving an even wider gap between the value of this land and the cost of building the new leisure centre, plunging our council further into debt.

If only this type of financial mismanagement was a one-off.

But at a recent Town Forum meeting we heard that another property bought by the council, Cedar House in Windsor, originally allocated for affordable housing, will now be sold off at a loss.

These two events alone put RBWM’s plans to sell off the publicly-owned woodlands and greenspace, currently leased by Maidenhead Golf Club, further into jeopardy.

The rhetoric about affordable housing can be completely dismissed now.

In reality they are selling off our publicly owned open space to hide their financial ineptitude, which given the plummeting value of the leisure centre site, the projected revenue from the SW Maidenhead development is unlikely to materialise in full.

The projected financials around the proposed development are sketchy at best, but it’s likely to cost many millions to sort out the infrastructure needed to make it remotely feasible.

This land is so much more valuable to our community for the benefits it provides to everyone living in Maidenhead right now.

It is our green lung, cleaning our air and reducing the incidence of cancer that is associated with air pollution.

This land can help us to increase biodiversity, mitigate flooding, store water in times of drought, and prevent the urban heat island effect from over development in our town.

It’s time to stop plans to sell off our greenspace and start planning for a more sustainable future for our community.

TINA QUADRINO

St Mark’s Road

Maidenhead

Just how keen are they to hear our views?

The council say they are keen to have residents’ views on building heights and are running a consultation with the public.

So just how keen are they to hear our views?

Off I went to the library to learn more.

I had missed the one and only afternoon drop in session at the library last Wednesday.

Sadly no one knew about the consultation nor where any details were.

Then the assistants dug deeper and directed me upstairs and together we found a Perspex box (see below), empty and with no paperwork and no display to look at.

To call this inadequate would be an understatement.

Not to be defeated I went to the website.

Now, who is willingly going to wade through documents 80 pages long?

Well one must in order to make a representation, because I need to state which section and paragraph number I object to, and would I like to submit revised wording.

Yes, I will be responding but I will be in a tiny minority because most people will have given up long ago.

Surely an important discussion about the tall buildings which will undoubtedly dominate Maidenhead for years is worthy of a proper discussion and needs at the very least a physical display to give perspective of how very tall and dominating these buildings might be.

An internet presentation is certainly not enough.

I still find it appalling that the new towers in Maidenhead centre will be 25 storeys high – almost double the existing tower situated above Santander Bank.

There will be a Teams meeting on Wednesday, September 28 from 6pm to 8pm – an online event via Microsoft for those who are internet savvy.

Heaven help any residents who aren’t!

We deserve better.

JUDY TRINDER

Islet Park Drive

Maidenhead

Do they understand customer service?

I note another council department failure in its customer services (Advertiser, September 8).

In April I wrote to RBWM regarding two areas of fly tipping and a general question re wheelie bins.

No response.

My daughter had to apply for the £150 fuel support allowance.

No reply for weeks until a letter arrived from RBWM encouraging her to apply.

She telephoned RBWM but had to leave a voice message.

No response.

So she applied again.

No response.

Do the council understand the term ‘customer service’?

BRIAN HARRIS

Edinburgh Road

Maidenhead

Dickens ‘held whole system up to ridicule’

Richard Simmonds, in his letter concerning Marlow Bridge bollards (Viewpoint, September 8), invoked a quote from Mr Bumble, ‘if the law says that, the law is a ass – a idiot’.

Charles Dickens – in whose work, Oliver Twist, Mr Bumble appears – will have written that with great feeling and understanding.

In fact, Charles Dickens made sure that the practitioners of law featured in many of his works and held the whole system up to ridicule.

He began his adult working life as a clerk at Ellis and Blackmore Solicitors in the City and recognised that the practice of law was long-winded, obstructive and distasteful.

I wish Mr Simmonds well in his attempt at a sensible resolution to the distasteful Marlow Bridge bollards obstruction.

DIANE HAYES

Hearne Drive

Holyport

Badgers not the main culprit for passing TB

I am writing in response to Ann Darracott’s recent letter (September 1), where she stated that commoners grazing cattle on local commons were concerned that badgers could be passing TB to their cattle.

Badgers are not the main culprit for the transmission of bTB – which is a bovine disease passed primarily between infected cattle who harbour the disease due to inadequate testing, poor bio-security and uncontrolled cattle movements.

This evidence is supported by many esteemed reports, including the very recent Badgers Found Dead Study (BFDS), whose results clearly show that badgers are not a reservoir host for bovine TB, but rather a spillover host.

These latest results support those of a previous survey of culled badgers in 2016, which found less than five per cent of culled badgers tested positive for TB.

A total of 372 badger carcasses underwent post mortem examination and sampling.

In all five southern counties – including Berkshire – only three M. tuberculosis complex bovis (MTCB) positive cases were identified, all from Oxfordshire, giving a prevalence for Oxfordshire of 3.8 per cent (3 out of 79), and an overall prevalence for the area, that includes Berkshire, of 1.0 per cent.

The answer to solving bTB in cattle should be to focus on the cattle themselves – one where farmers should be incentivised to develop robust biosecurity measures and one where the testing regime is radically improved.

The Government needs to push forward with better testing methods and must speed up its plans for vaccination research and deployment for cattle – but most of all it needs to stop the badger ‘blame game’ that then gets picked up by ill-informed members of the public – as this at heart is a disease where transmission has been proved to be cattle to cattle – not badgers.

JILL HOBLIN

Chairman – Binfield Badger Group Berkshire

‘Let’s fight now for a better future for them'

Sunday, September 18 has been marked as a National Moment of Reflection to mourn the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and reflect on her life and legacy.

The National Moment of Reflection will take place at 8pm on Sunday, the night before the State Funeral, and be marked by a one-minute silence.

The silence can be marked privately at home, with friends and family, out on doorsteps or the street with neighbours, or at locally arranged community events and vigils.

Community groups, clubs and other organisations across the country are encouraged to take part and people overseas are also encouraged to observe the one-minute silence at 8pm local time.

Once we have reflected on the long and glorious reign of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, we should also step forward to consider the challenges that we will face with King Charles III and set out a vision of the world we want to create with King Charles III.

As Her Majesty considered herself a servant, and King Charles III has vowed to continue her life of service to the nations, perhaps we should also consider a life of service to the generations that follow and, fight now for a better future for them.

A future with climate change under control.

Prosperity without pollution.

A life of wellbeing in greater harmony with the ecosystems that feed us.

Cllr WISDOM DA COSTA

WWRA, Clewer & Dedworth West

No need for a lesson on US transgressions

I don’t need a history lesson from Mr Pinto regarding US transgressions over the past 50 years or so.

I’m well aware of them, because, unlike in Russia, we live in a country with a free press and broadcast media.

Most of all, I am infuriated by the implication that I and others have been ‘brainwashed’ by the media.

In ‘the west’ we have multiple sources of information.

That’s how Mr Pinto himself is aware of those past transgressions by the USA and Britain.

Indeed, that’s how I am aware of them.

It’s certainly true that America has sometimes behaved appallingly in the past, for example in Vietnam and in Central and South America.

And Blair’s foolish assistance of the idiot Bush in invading Iraq is to also be deplored.

But I and Mr Pinto are free to criticise these actions without being thrown into jail or harassed by the KGB, or FSB as I believe they like to be known.

And what’s more, the USA is not our enemy.

I’m mostly concerned that his letter focused on the nasty words I used to describe poor Mr Putin, rather than commenting on the main focus of my letter, which was about the head-in-the-sand inaction of Angela Merkel and other European leaders for the past 16 years or so.

This, together with our own government’s muddled energy policies are what have largely contributed to this terrible energy crisis, mounting inflation and industrial unrest.

However, rather than defending Angela Merkel and other European leaders, in his letter he seemed just a bit too keen on supporting an enemy state, because make no mistake, that is what Russia under Putin has sadly become.

We all hoped that after the fall of communism, Russia would finally become a decent democratic country and maybe even our friends, Russia was even invited to join the G8.

But sadly it was not to be.

Unfortunately, just wishing and hoping that Putin was decent didn’t make it so.

I am shocked that any citizen of this country should seek to defend Putin, who is in fact an admirer of Stalin, with a dream to reinstate the old Soviet empire in Europe.

However, when I think about it, even Adolf Hitler had his apologists in the shape of Edward VIII and others in the 1930s.

I imagine if TV were available then, Adolf might have established GT to show the good side of Nazism.

In his letter, Mr Pinto says ‘The energy and food cost nightmare is as much a consequence of western economic sanctions as deliberate malice by Putin’.

Wrong analysis.

Western economic sanctions are a consequence of Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. No invasion = no sanctions = no energy crisis.

Finally, I usually like to write more light-hearted letters to The Advertiser, so I shall not be wasting my time continuing this discussion with Mr Pinto, should he decide to respond.

Life is just too short.

MALCOLM STRETTEN

Boulters Lane

Maidenhead

We must relish the freedom of democracy

Sal Pinto’s observations about the culpability of USA interference in the politics of other countries are accurate and thought provoking.

Most readers would tend to agree more with Malcolm Stretten’s point of view because of a crucial difference.

Were Sal to air criticisms of the Russian government in Russia, there’s a good chance of imprisonment and worse.

News media in Russia and Hungary does not brook the attacks which Sal makes.

The news media in the west of course has rogue publications like The Daily Mail, Fox News and others, but there is a balance and there are outlets which are easy to obtain which are permitted to be critical of those in power.

That democratic luxury is denied in Russia. It is sad that Russia Today simply is a megaphone for state propaganda in a way which is not true of the BBC, Independent News and Channel 4 news, or indeed The Guardian and The Mirror.

Relish the freedom of democracy lest it is removed.

JAMES AIDAN

Sutton Road

Cookham

EU is and was a trade protection cartel

Regarding James Aidan’s letter (Viewpoint, September 8), re-joiners better understand that the EU is and always was a trade protection cartel to protect Europe’s industry and agriculture from world competition.

It developed into a drive to become a sovereign federated state to pitch Europe against the USA and China. Return to this club – under their terms and conditions – and be governed by them from the sidelines.

MDG

Forlease Drive

Maidenhead

Your Prince awaits at the pearly gates ma’am

Your Majesty our Queen

The world just missed a beat

Our hearts stood still with a sudden chill

To hear that your life’s complete

Ma’am you’re irreplaceable

After 70 years of your reign

The grieving starts with broken hearts

With sadness, loss and pain

We celebrate your life Ma’am

You gave pure and selfless love

You led by pure example

Send peace from up above

Those who met you ma’am

Loved you, come what may

From an early age you took centre stage

Through to your dying day

Now the end has come

Your work on Earth is done

Your Prince awaits at the pearly gates

You are together again as one.

MICKEY BROWN

Binfield