Your letters - January 8, 2010

Home delivery is nothing new

I thought I'd ring Battle Library today to explain that I couldn't get in as arranged to do the display in the entrance lobby for Battle Choral Society. They are always so helpful and efficient and the phone answered by someone I know and who knows me. It takes seconds. Now, however, they (East Sussex County Council) have a 'new improved system' which means your call goes to a 'centralised system' with the dreaded option buttons. Naturally it costs you more as you pay for the time it takes you to navigate the 'new improved system' to get to where you could have got without the 'new improved system'.

It reminded me how, in the bad old days before they too introduced a 'new improved system', you could phone your local bank and speak directly to someone who knew exactly who you were and how they could help you. It also reminded me of a conversation I overheard. A young lady was telling another how wonderful the new online supermarket shopping was, "they deliver it to your door!" when an elderly lady leant across and said "My dear that's nothing new, fifty years ago I used to phone the butcher or grocer with my order and it was delivered the same day".

Brenda Anson

Stream Lane, Sedlescombe

MEP's holiday subsidy 'an affront'

There are so many families in East Sussex that have never been able to afford a skiing holiday and yet many of those families are having to subsidise other, more affluent families, indeed rich families, to have a luxury ski holiday.

This grossly unfair situation takes place in the middle of February at the luxury ski resort of Spiazzi in the Italian Alps where 80 children between 8 and 17 years from rich families will have a week's full board in a three-star hotel, be taught to ski and attend "lessons" on snow-dog exercising, mountains and snow, open air games and a torchlight procession, all subsidised by us tax payers.

Most families on low wages cannot afford even to take a holiday, let alone an expensive ski holiday. The scam is perpetrated by non other than the European Union that has decreed that EU officials and MEPs' children can be subsidised by us tax payers to have this holiday. Well, an MEP on a salary of 86,000 has 45 percent of the holiday subsidised by tax payers. An EU official that is on, say, 69,620 gets 52 percent paid by us. In fact, even if they earn 108,000 they still get a subsidy! Furthermore, if they have more than one child going there is another 10% reduction for each child, yes, all paid for by tax payers across the EU including us here in Sussex. The actual cost per head of the holiday is 822.

This is an affront to hard-working families on low wages, unjustified by any moral considerations and clearly demonstrates the degree to which the EU adopts a cavalier attutude to it's tax payers. Rubbing salt into the wound MEPs are also demanding a 3.7% pay rise, well above inflation. The expression, "'blow' you Jack; I'm, all right . . . .and want better" comes to mind. While they are taking us for a ride we are taking them for a ski!

Tony Smith

Brownbread Stud, Ashburnham

Wrong 'Frenchman's Head' final score

I think your anonymous participant in the Kicking The Frenchman's Head game at Winchelsea on Boxing Day may have suffered from a bump on the head. As a participant in the game who is prepared to be named, and indeed there is photographic evidence of such in the paper, I must insist that the correct result is recorded! The blue team scored seven goals, with the reds and golds scoring three apiece - a very different result from your mystery player's recollections. Could your deluded source be a member of the defeated red team and was he, by any chance, responsible for drawing up the WMD dossier for Tony Blair?

Andy Stuart

West St, Rye

Kindness shown by strangers

I thought I'd ring Battle Library today to explain that I couldn't get in as arranged to do the display in the entrance lobby for Battle Choral Society. They are always so helpful and efficient and the phone answered by someone I know and who knows me. It takes seconds. Now, however, they (East Sussex County Council) have a 'new improved system' which means your call goes to a 'centralised system' with the dreaded option buttons. Naturally it costs you more as you pay for the time it takes you to navigate the 'new improved system' to get to where you could have got without the 'new improved system'.

It reminded me how, in the bad old days before they too introduced a 'new improved system', you could phone your local bank and speak directly to someone who knew exactly who you were and how they could help you. It also reminded me of a conversation I overheard. A young lady was telling another how wonderful the new online supermarket shopping was, "they deliver it to your door!" when an elderly lady leant across and said "My dear that's nothing new, fifty years ago I used to phone the butcher or grocer with my order and it was delivered the same day".

Brenda Anson

Stream Lane, Sedlescombe

Tory document a 'glossy fake'

I was interested to read your article in the Rye paper last week about the recently-launched Conservative policy document on coastal towns.

Given the reticence with which my Conservative counterpart has engaged in policy debates over the last months, I was interested to give the paper a read.

My assessment, for the record, is this: the Conservatives have produced a 26-page document with 45 policies to help coastal towns, but not one single policy is specific to coastal towns.

It is a pre-manifesto document presented to look as though it is specifically geared to combat the problems that we in coastal towns face.

In short, it is a glossy fake.

How disappointing, but how apt.

Nick Perry

Parliamentary campaigner, Hastings & Rye Liberal Democrats