Dear Editor,

Further to Jim Bowden's letter regarding the demise of the beach pool.

As a child I paddled in the pool, my wife paddled in the pool, and my children paddled in the pool. By the time grandchildren came along the pool was gone. A candidate for the council canvassed for ideas to improve the town. I suggested re-instatement of the pool.

She replied that was not possible as a Lifeguard would have to be employed! This Health and Safety gone mad. Surely parents or carers can ensure the safety of their young charges.

An enquiry about the supervision at another venue said that swimmers were responsible for their own wellbeing. I wonder if the beach will be ruled out of bounds as people get into trouble in the sea.

Clive Gardiner

Minehead

Dear Editor,

Ms J Shaw seems to think that those of us who question the necessity of the mad rush to net zero are the ones who should be providing evidence to support our beliefs rather than those responsible for impoverishing the country. This is a form of gaslighting i.e. implying that the sceptics are deficient in this regard rather than the proponents.

In the meantime, let's see what the IPCC (The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has to say:

In their words "no evidence of manmade climate change has yet emerged in respect of flooding, drought, storms, cyclones, snowfall, avalanches, or marine heatwaves. Any changes in major climate events are within the range expected through natural climatic variation"

I do have other reported trends to support my scepticism (eg death rates from the aforementioned weather events have been reduced by 98 per cent over the last century thanks to improvements in shelter, transport, and communication all reliant on fossil fuels) but appreciate that my letter is probably already too long for your pages for me to list them.

Finally, is your correspondent aware that those responsible for the bits of British science and research which she evidently champions would lose their funding unless they continued to provide the most pessimistic of forecasts unsupported by the rest of the scientific world which has, in fact, been steadily downgrading the risk of global warming.

Yours,

Kevin Bye

Watchet

Dear Editor,

I read the article in the Free Press 22/05/26 about Penny Webber loaning her lovely cart to Allerford Museum. I would like this letter printed please.

What a lovely idea Penny, what happy memories were evoked for me. I can recall many rides on our farms in their horse and cart, sometimes the tractor pulled the cart from the corn fields to the farm.

The farms were our playground, imagine that nowadays, it would be a big no. When the corn was cut the villagers surrounded the corn field with our ‘gert big sticks’ to chase the rabbit — with a Hugh and cry went up there she goes, we chased the rabbit (poor thing), the farmer stood with his gun to shoot it if we missed the rabbit, can you imagine that (goodness me) was all the fun of harvesting.

I would be talking of the 1940s, war was on shortage of food as well the farmer shared the rabbits between villagers (happy days).

From a very senior villager.

Name and address supplied.

Dear Editor,

There needs to be some clarification of the State Pension situation described by Jim Sokol (Postbag, May 22).

As far as I am aware, the Tax/National Insurance contributions from those currently in work pays today’s pensioners (including me). There never has been a “fund” as is the case with private pensions.

Today’s workers might, understandably, resent their taxes being raised to pay higher pensions to people who may be better off than they are.

Making comparisons with other countries’ pensions is misleading unless you take their personal tax levels into account - if you are paying over 57 per cent of your income in tax as they do in Finland it is a very different scenario to our level of 45 per cent (2025 figures) and ten European countries have higher taxes than the UK. The number of pensioners is increasing while the birth rate is falling.

Advances in medicine keep us alive longer and strain the NHS/Social Care budgets. It’s a massive conundrum - nobody wants higher taxes, many want better living standards that have to be paid for. I’ve yet to hear a solution from Starmer, Burnham, Streeting ….or whoever you think might be running the country in a few weeks time. And Farage is too busy defending his £5-million “protection money” windfall and subsequent house purchase for cash!

Yours sincerely,

Sandra Jones

Old Cleeve

Dear Editor,

Following the recent local elections, now seems an appropriate time to remind councils what local government is actually meant to do.

People vote in local elections expecting competent delivery of local services: bins collected on time, potholes repaired, safe streets, functioning transport and support for schools and vulnerable residents. They do not elect councillors to posture as amateur diplomats or to spend taxpayer-funded time debating international conflicts.

Across the country, communities are facing serious and immediate challenges. Yet increasingly, some councils appear more interested in symbolic foreign policy motions, headline-grabbing declarations and ideological campaigning.

Local government functions best when it remains focused on issues it can genuinely solve. Nobody contacts their council asking them to resolve conflicts thousands of miles away before fixing broken streetlights, antisocial behaviour or crumbling roads outside their homes.

That is where councils should focus their time, energy and taxpayers’ money.

Yours sincerely,

Ryan Mendelson, via email