<Headline>

THE letter in the October 30 issue entitled ‘We need Europe’ is typical miserable, defeatist doomsday rhetoric pushed out by disloyal Remainers!

What a pathetic sneering jibe to call our Prime Minister a ‘baffoonish puppet’. Boris Johnson is a very brave savvy man, do not underrate him!

He is the most dedicated personable PM we have had for decades, and in the near future he will lead his majority Government to take the UK out of the despotic EU circus.

Some clown…some puppet…some neck!

Our nation has only become weakened by ignorant Remainers who peddle phrases like ‘weakened and enfeebled’…‘slow motion car crash’ and ‘if the UK survives’.

We are not going to ‘fall off a cliff’ because we are ready to leave…immediately! We have had 3½ years to be ready and we have already paid a high price caused by distraction and vacillation!

Like millions of unpatriotic Remainers, the writer of this letter has fallen willingly into the EU honey trap!

Even before the 2016 UK Referendum, the EU propagated emotive and contentious subjects, like the Irish border and Immigration issues, creating distractions and issues that have kept the UK population preoccupied and confused.

UK Parliamentarians took the bait too, egged on by the blatantly biased BBC, the Remainer TV and press and the all-powerful social media.

The EU have guilefully sat on their hands for over 3½ years and surreptitiously steered the focus of the British mindset away from the truth behind the EU’s insidious smoke-screened strategy.

The results have been vitriolic and our once globally revered British Parliament has become a rabble of snarling party-protecting in-fighters with little regard for the effect on the worried UK population.

We can stand on our own feet and run our united kingdom perfectly well!

Philip Maynard

Dursley

TOTAL MELTDOWN

I DON’T belong to any political party but have been a fascinated observer of the developing political situation.

The Brexit 50 pence coin meltdown is symbolic of the gradual Brexit meltdown itself as reality and disillusion hit home.

Leading pro-Brexit national newspapers have been impacted.

Daily Telegraph pre-tax profits fell by 94 per cent last year, Daily Express, sold to the Trinity Mirror Group and the former extreme Brexit Daily Mail editor moved away from its news pages.

There was a massive difference between over a million anti-Brexit marchers converging on London recently and the series of damp squib pro-Brexit protests at missing the October 31 deadline; no one turned up at all to the “huge” one in Doncaster!

UKIP have just lost their sixth leader since the 2016 Referendum.

To add to this growing trend, in the general election the Brexit Party plans to fight the Tory Party for the pro-Brexit vote.

Arguably it is the entrenched differing views of extreme Eurosceptics fighting over the shape Brexit should take that underlies this meltdown.

The opportunists like Boris Johnson seeking to exploit the situation, reducing workers’ rights, reducing environmental protection and using the NHS as a bargaining chip in post-Brexit trade negotiations with Trump, add to the general disillusion and discontent.

Andrew Milroy

Address supplied

MEDIA BIAS

NOW the Supreme Court has intervened to obstruct a plot to subvert our parliamentary democracy, I would like to call on the police and the criminal justice system to do the same with respect to open or thinly veiled incitements to political violence from public figures.

I also call on the media, especially the BBC, to recover their moral compass and re-balance the false equivalence they have been applying to commentary.

Be a little more curious and transparent about whose interest is being served by those commentators and who is paying them to say it.

Chris Jockel

Eastcombe

TREE PLEDGE

CAN Molly Scott Cato explain just how the Greens plan to plant 915,751 trees every day for 30 years.

Who will be planting them and where will they be planted or is this just another electoral fantasy?

Shirley Knott

Stroud

STAND DOWN

DEAR Molly Scott Cato and David Drew.

I respect both of you as people and politicians but would like to express my dismay that such a marginal seat, with a small majority in David’s favour in 2017 is being used as a gamble for the Green’s to get a second MP into Parliament.

The Lib Dems have withdrawn their candidate but there seems to be no dialogue between Molly and David, which means that you are both campaigning largely for the same seats.

There may be some Remainers who will move to the Greens but the success of the EU elections of 2017, is no comparison for this election.

You are both taking the risk of losing to the Tories.

This is not about Leave or Remain, it is about whether the Tories will win in Stroud with a divided opposition.

This, is an unacceptable and avoidable gamble with the people of Stroud, the country and the planet.

Sorry to sound so dramatic but the thought of the Tories winning and Boris becoming PM is indescribably appalling.

So far, we have seen Boris on ‘good behaviour’!

Please, do not take this risk. Voting tactically in 2017, was a close success for Labour, voting tactically in December is now much less clear and seems to be handing Stroud to the Tories by dividing us up.

Please reconsider your campaigns and one of you take the, admittedly courageous and career challenging, choice not to stand.

C Brown

Stroud

GREEN GAMBLE

I WAS interested to read that Downfield sixth-formers have called on Green Party candidate Molly Scott Cato to stand down.

This issue is clearly the issue exercising the minds of progressive Stroud voters the most.

It’s difficult not to be partisan and tribalist about this question, but I want to try.

I was a Green Party member for over 20 years but left to join Labour when Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader.

Without Corbyn as leader, I’d likely still be a proud Green.

Most Labour members know that Molly would make a brilliant MP, and we’d love to have her in Parliament.

But under our brutal first-past-the-post electoral system, it’s just delusional politics to think that Stroud can be won by any party other than Labour or Conservative.

For this to happen it would take a political earthquake that would make the momentous 1962 Orpington by-election look like a tiny ripple, with tens of thousands of Labour voters dropping their allegiance to David Drew and having to vote Green.

In any conceivable universe, it just isn’t going to happen.

I’m also worried about the Green Party’s reputation. Conversations with voters reveal widespread incredulity – even anger – amongst Green supporters that Molly has decided to stand against the impeccably green-minded incumbent, David Drew.

Perhaps Molly is trying to build a bridge to winning Stroud in the future.

But if her standing lets the Tories in through a split vote, Labour voters in their thousands will never forgive the Greens.

Yet these are the very voters Molly would need to vote for her to have any chance of winning in the future.

The Conservatives will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of the anti-Tory vote being split in what is a knife-edge Labour–Tory marginal.

All Stroud voters who care deeply about our planet and the climate emergency really must think long and hard about how best to serve the cause of our planet when they cast their vote on December 12.

Dr Richard House

Stroud

I BACK MOLLY

MOLLY won’t be standing down as she knows how important this is.

We face an extraordinarily difficult decade. At our doorstep, ecological disaster and economic rashness is affecting every single one of us.

The greatest concern for this Parliament is to develop a resilience against it, and a focused economics that must organise for a different future.

I want an environmental strategist, a competent economist and an excellent communicator with well-defined policies for it, representing Stroud in Parliament.

Labour and David Drew do not fit that criteria.

Competency matters. Molly Scott Cato can deliver.

She is an initiator, her experience is proven as our MEP.

L Child

Stroud

RIGHT TO STAND

IN response to the 19 Downfield sixth-formers calling for Molly Scott Cato to pull out of this election, I would say that this is precisely the time for all who believe in the principles of the Green Party to get behind Molly’s bid to become our next MP and take her seat alongside the excellent Caroline Lucas who has shown in Brighton that the election of a Green Party MP is not only possible but also of huge benefit to us all.

The climate change emergency requires us all to act with courage, and voting for the policies and the person that one truly believes in is one way of doing this.

As Molly herself says: “If not now, when? If not here, where?”

Mary Jeans

Stroud

NO INFLUENCE

WE appreciate Molly Scott Cato’s response to our letter.

It’s encouraging to see a politician take an interest in the views of the people that they hope to represent. However, we believe it lacks scope and perspective regarding how the electorate truly feels.

EU election results cannot be considered representative of how the electorate will vote in a general election. This is for a variety of reasons.

The Green Party receives a greater number of votes in EU elections because the electoral system is proportional, meaning no votes are wasted.

Additionally, the Green Party has a greater influence in the European Parliament since representatives of the party are elected across the continent.

Unfortunately, this is simply not the case in this general election.

Even if the impossible were to happen and you were to win a seat in Stroud, the Green Party’s influence in Parliament would still be negligible due to the fact there is not enough support to even have a chance of winning significant numbers of seats nationally.

So again, we implore you to stand down in this election and fortify David Drew as much as possible.

Jacob Phypers and Oakley Pollard

Downfield sixth form

Stroud

CORBYN SHAM

CALLING all Remainers and would-be Remainers.

Let’s not be misled. What Corbyn is offering is a sham.

A so called referendum which, by the time it takes place, will be heavily loaded against Remain.

Let us support the Lib-Dems nationally and thank them locally for graciously standing down.

I admire and respect David Drew and have campaigned and voted for him in the past.

However, in present circumstances, I would like to see Molly Scott Cato in the House of Commons.

Under our antiquated voting system the Green Party, like other small parties, has been under represented in Parliament.

Ken Brown

Stroud

WE NEED PR

AFTER attending the Greenpeace/XR hustings event at the Sub Rooms on November 19, it stuck me yet again that a collaborative approach by Labour and the Green Party, who both put forward terrific and somewhat similar policies on the environment, would be a logical step forward – even although Ms Scott Cato was keen to point out some of Labour’s alleged deficiencies.

It has been mentioned on numerous occasions that Labour hasn’t reciprocated the Green support it received in previous elections, which is a valid point.

This is due to the relative size of the parties – whatever the rhetoric there’s a vast difference in scale, especially nationally – and our disenfranchising electoral system.

How many votes would the Greens receive if they all actually counted for something?

Nobody knows, but I think the electorate should be given a system where people’s preferences are accurately reflected by the number of representatives elected.

Although I am a Labour member – one of the ‘big two’ – I’m firmly of the opinion that some form of proportional representation is the way forward.

People’s wishes would be honoured, and arrangements between similar-minded parties could be brokered based upon true proportionality.

It would certainly work for Stroud, and avoid much of the strife that’s taken place during the last few weeks.

But for now we’re stuck with the present deeply flawed system – and it looks likely to cost both Labour and the Green Party very dear.

Paul Halas

Stroud

A TYRANNY!

A QUESTION for Brexiteers. In the 2016 referendum, the Cotswolds constituency voted 51% Remain, Cheltenham 56% and Stroud 55%.

And yet the MPs for the first two of these have consistently voted to leave the EU.

In totally ignoring the views of the 48% who voted Remain in the referendum, ever since 2016 the Government has reinforced a situation which has a name - the Tyranny of the Majority.

However, the dictionary definitely doesn’t allow for more than one dictator per country, so whatever you call the parliamentary resistance to the the disaster known as Brexit, dictatorship it ain’t.

Roy Simpson

Colesbourne

FREE BROCCOLI

THE election campaign is now a farce with the politicians trying to out-gun each other with even more ridiculous pledges which they have no hope of honouring.

I will vote for the party that pledges free and unlimited amounts of broccoli to all households in the UK.

Mr A Lavender

Thornbury

NO TO BORIS!

A REPLY to ‘Go Boris’ by MJ Radnedge.

Go Boris indeed. Just go!

A failed, embarrassing and useless former foreign secretary voted as our PM by 0.13% of the electorate who has caused so much damage to our democracy and parliament in just a few months.

Just imagine if he had been our leader since 2016!!

MJ Radnedge and his dyed-in-the-wool - send them home- mates actually believed Johnsons words emblazoned on the sides of a red bus, lies about Turkish immigration and many more lies.

Disturbing, extremely childish quotes about Muslim women’s dress code was also unpalatable

Most reasonable thinking adults who now know the facts would change their mind on Brexit and I hope they are able to very soon

Mr Johnson destined to become one of the shortest reigning prime ministers in history.

Go Johnson and quickly please - and take Nigel Farage with you.

Bob Bell

Chipping Sodbury

PHOTO ID DEBATE

I WAS amused by our Tory candidate responding to Labour worries about Tory plans in the Queen’s Speech for voters to have to produce photo ID in order to vote in the election.

She said it wasn’t being raised to her as a concern on the doorstep.

I guess she couldn’t think of anything positive to say about the plans.

That’s not surprising as it’s a very bad idea.

Millions of people across Britain don’t have access to any photo ID (mostly older people and less well off people - my elderly mum certainly didn’t have photo ID of any kind).

If the Tories decide ID has to be a passport or driving licence, it means 11 million people can’t vote.

What price democracy then?

Hilary Fowles

Cam

SCOTTISH ISSUE

IS this a perception of a bad parent sort of problem?

Is this the real reason why the SNP does not like Westminster?

The organisation after all that allowed favourable devolved terms as well as extra on going money via the Barnett formula.

A vote for Scottish independence would mean the marginalisation of a small country with a relatively small population and economy in the international scheme of things.

And there is no guarantee whatsoever that the EU post Brexit would allow an independent Scotland to join them.

Elizabeth Smith

Woodmancote

THE UNELECTED

It is interesting at a local level to observe the recent speech of the Queen where we have an unelected monarch, talking to unelected members of the House of Lords, talking to a minority government with an unelected prime minister.

And people talk about taking back control from the EU!

J Pallister

Dursley

NURSING BURSARY

I WAS interested to learn from the Tory leaflet that they plan to increase the numbers of NHS nurses.

Again the Tories seek to solve a problem of their own making!

Leaving aside the 12% reduction in real terms that pay nurses have suffered under the Tories, I fail to see how the elimination of the nursing bursary will help in this aim.

Applications for training places have already fallen by a third. Its reintroduction must be a priority.

A Rudduck

Berkeley