Letters - July 17, 2017

The public have known and seen this for many years, with inadequate policing because of the cuts.

Yet, every month, half a million pounds of Lancashire taxpayers’ monies are wasted protecting just one industrial site on Preston New Road by over policing, mainly against middle-aged protesters, while the county’s residential areas and towns are grossly under-resourced.

Our police commissioner, with his ever diminishing budget, must surely charge Cuadrilla the half a million pounds a month back dated to when this prime agricultural land was desecrated into a large industrial site.

Out-of-ordinary events, tournaments, sporting fixtures, even for long periods of time, have to pay for extra police attention and Cuadrilla should pay for the full cost to Lancashire tax payers for this excessive police presence, including for the officers parked in vans opposite B & Q. Taxpayers must not be asked for extra police rates.

The gas industry makes huge profits from the massive regular price increases to us, the consumers, which grow yearly, unabated and unchecked by government, so the industry can well afford to pay for this extra police presence.

Lancashire has clearly, democratically, said it does not want fracking.

Residential and town areas are suffering unnecessarily through this excessive waste of the public’s police rates at Preston New Road. Police stations closed, no street nor traffic patrols and driver behaviour worse than ever due to lack of enforcement.

Cuadrilla, desirous to ingratiate themselves with the community by handing out donations, should willingly pay up for the excellent police attention they receive at this stringent time.

Mr D Barker

Pine Crescent
Poulton

POLITICS

Words are powerful tools

With all the hate-filled rhetoric about ‘them and us’ that we hear from Jeremy Corbyn, is it surprising that Conservative candidates are being abused while going about their lawful everyday business?

Words are very powerful tools and should be used with caution and not to divide one section of society from another, especially at this time of great uncertainty.

J Hutchinson

via email

LOTTERY

Who really 
needs £87m?

In this day and age, when nothing seems sacred, I simply cannot congratulate the recent £87m lottery winners.

Just what is he/she going to do with all that money?

We learn every day of much human suffering which cannot be alleviated and yet we hear of this.

Why not have a lottery with a top prize, say, of £1m? Now that, in my view, would be sense.

Barry 
Foster

Address 
supplied

CHARITY

Thank you St Annes Sainsburys

On behalf of everyone at N-Vision and The Blackpool, Fylde & Wyre Society for the Blind, I would like to thank Sainsbury’s, St Annes, for allowing us to hold a bucket collection there on July 7 and 8.

Their customers were very generous and £336.65 was raised.

Thank you also to our team of fundraising volunteers who stood with the buckets throughout the day.

Everyone’s support is very much appreciated and enables us to continue to offer the many vital services we do throughout the local area.

Julie Barlow

Finance Administrator
N-Vision

FRACKING

Protests send out bad image of Fylde

I have just seen the worst scenes of public disorder in the Fylde brought about by the so called peaceful protesters on Preston New road.

The complete lack of respect and support for our local police officers, trying to ensure that the citizens and business people can go about their daily lives, is contemptible and sends out a very bad image of Fylde as a place to do business.

Whatever one’s views on the merits of Fracking or otherwise, it is not within the bounds of normal public behaviour to block the Queen’s highway and disrupt the free flow of traffic so vital to the wellbeing of the people of Fylde.

The new Chief Constable of Lancashire, Mr Rhodes, a local man, who served with such distinction as Chief Superintent in Blackpool and Fylde, must find it extremely galling that so much of his officers’ time is spent trying to control unruly, disrespectful people, rather than doing their normal job as beat officers, meeting and protecting their local citizens who fund the police through their council tax paid from their hard -earned salaries.

Greenpeace and their fellow travellers, subsidised by their anonymous donors, are no friends of Fylde and its residents, and have no sense of the wellbeing shared by the people who reside in the area.

Bernard Whittle OBE

Hon County Alderman
Life long citizen of Fylde

CHARITY

Quorn makes 
Mo thin?

After watching some of the London Anniversary Games I have to ask why do all the competitors look like undernourished stick insects?

Mo Farah looks positively ill.

Is that all thanks to the Quorn burgers that he eats as part of his “healthy” diet?

J Vintin

by email