You write: Eastern Gateway, child refugees, VCS charities and much more - The Redditch Standard

You write: Eastern Gateway, child refugees, VCS charities and much more

Redditch Editorial 26th Jan, 2020   0

ONCE again the moral compass of local MPs points aimlessly, having voted to scrap laws to ensure the safety of some of the most vulnerable children in society. Last week’s vote on the Brexit bill saw Conservatives reject the call for legislation to guarantee the right of unaccompanied child refugees to be reunited with family living in the UK.

Having fled war and persecution, these children have taken a perilous journey to get to Europe in search of sanctuary. We need to keep them safe.

As we approach Holocaust Memorial Day, we’re reminded of the compassion shown by the UK over 80 years ago, when 10,000 children on the Kindertransport were welcomed, rescued from certain death.

Today, the only safe and legal route for unaccompanied children to come to the UK from Europe is the Dubs Scheme, now due to be scrapped after offering just 480 children sanctuary in the last three years.




It’s unclear why Government has chosen to block a legal commitment to the rights of refugee children.

But what is clear, is that these desperate children are on our doorstep, living in tents and harassed by French police.


They face serious risks to get to safety, at the mercy of traffickers, or curled-up in a lorry wheel-arch.

Is that really the welcome the UK wants to offer these children?

A Waugh, Bromsgrove and Redditch Green Party

WHAT’S all this nonsense that I read that Redditch Borough Council is to cut funding for the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS)? (Redditch Standard).

I didn’t vote for the Conservative candidates at the last local elections, just for them to attack the most vulnerable members of our society.

This is the council that provides ‘free’ events (there is no such thing of course) such as the Arrow Valley Park fireworks.

This is also known as the Community Charge Conflagration.

There is no way I can vote Conservative again at this rate.

I have voted in every election since I was 21. So for whom do I now vote?

I could try my natural party Labour, but not while the leader of the local group lives in Bromsgrove.

The Lib Dems are a joke; while the Greens have no policies. It’s a problem.

Maybe the ruling Conservative group might think a bit more and talk a bit less and have a change of heart.

D Vincent, Winyates East

REGARDING the Redditch Eastern Gateway (Letters).

I live in Kingham Close and have been woken up at 7.30am with this droning and bleeping noise from the work being carried out that on one wants, no one needs, and is nowhere near the people that agreed to it at the back of us.

I cant wait for the building work and the pile driving to start.

We all complained to the MPs that are supposed to be on our side and those liars who told us it was going to be a small building for technology to create jobs and would not increase traffic noise pollution etc…

Now it’s turns out it’s going to be a massive building with hundreds of lorries in and out day and night parking for hundreds of lorries and cars and we don’t even know who is going to be moving in to it because the powers that be don’t want us to know.

The letters the MP sent out to everyone regarding this said ‘people don’t like change’ – in other words shut up and put up because they don’t care and we obviously don’t matter.

D Horne, Winyates Green

WHILE waiting for the bus at the bus station, it arrived and a group of children in front piled on to the bus, opened the windows and threw their bus passes to their friends.

I don’t blame Diamond Buses for changing their system.

Name and Address supplied

DESPITE our continued request for Arrow Vale School to drop Green Sward Lane from its letterhead due to the unacceptable amount of school traffic that use that road, we note in this weeks’s Standard’s Appointments Section that it is still using the school address as Green Sward Lane but have used the post code from Matchborough Way.

Is this a case that Principle Ian Mellor cannot be bothered to pay attention to what the is school is putting in its advertisements or more likely the school doesn’t care about what the residents of Green Sward Lane have to put up with all the extra traffic.

So in teacher language Ian Mellor you must try harder.

J Kowalski, Redditch

WITH the New Year kicked off are those resolutions /optimism for better circumstances still in good shape?

The town’s unusual centrepiece Christmas Tree created mostly feelgood reactions, let’s ignore the you-know-who idiot.

How about some designs for a similar ‘walk through’ this year but using locally grown trees/recycled materials?

‘Veganuary’ promotes healthier, meat-free choices.

Is the pledge to sign up and get to the gym or other activity still going?

There’s not much inspiration from Redditch United, almost relegated already. Let’s not give up just yet.

Australian fire disaster, Iran and USA conflict, plane crash – beyond belief and we’re still in January.

Near or far there’s much to care for and be concerned about.

The motto from the former Leys High School, ‘Audere Sapere Incipe’, seems to be significant: ‘Dare to be Wise, Begin Now’.

A Godwin, London SW1W

Auschwitz Remembered

Seventy five years ago this week

The world looked on aghast

As Auschwitz was liberated

When once the war had passed.

The concentration camp had seen atrocities,

That surpassed all known belief,

That brought on their disclosure

An avalanche of grief.

The world has moved on since that day

But the memories remain.

Let us remember the vows made then,

The pledge of ‘Never Again’

The world must never witness horror

That the Holocaust even now induces

But yet we must never forget,

The grief every war produces.

L Wadlow, Bordesley

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