LETTERS: What you wrote to us about this week

The destruction of the high street
About eight years back when anther parking charge heist was engineered by WDC, my practice, which had been in Easton Street since 1979, threw the towel in and moved out of Wycombe. Dogged by WDC doctoring business rates, greedy landlords (private landlords including the National Coal-board Pension Fund as well as WDC) lifting rents and then WDC parking charges were in truth the end. So we moved. This stupid new WDC action of increasing parking charges will only repeat the same thoughts from the remaining professional offices and small commercial premises clinging on in Wycombe Town centre, leaving the High Street, Easton Street and the other old central core business areas to become even more like an abandoned ghost town than it does at present. Charity shops, well they pay no business rate, and most of the time have concession rents just to keep the buildings occupied. How many more of them can you get? And is this really the sort of shop you want if you are trying to rejuvenate the High Street? If you are a small firm/business/shop trying to get started, or to manage with a falling town centre foot fall would you economically bother to choose Wycombe? No I don’t think so. Moving on I only work part time now and mainly from home, so recently I have been walking in to Wycombe when I have need to and coming back on the bus back, sensible if you are to avoid crippling parking charges. Fine if the buses run, in the last three weeks the bus company has arbitrarily cancelled the service I have tried use not once but three times each week. On one occasion the service I needed was cancelled four times in a row, reason “can’t find the drivers” and without anyone bothering to ament the service announcement screens in the bus station. And to top it all when I asked at the bus station office if/when as bus might run the administrator was downright rude. So I have used taxis for the return journey. Again well done Wycombe for encouraging town centre commercial rejuvenation and well done the bus company for providing “the service you can rely on”.
Anthony Mealing, High Wycombe

Denial of our democratic vote
MP Dominic Grieve was elected on a Leave manifesto. The 5/4/19 Times had a long recital of MP Grieve's "orchestrated campaign" complaint but in the final paragraph a Conservative Party spokesman said: "The Conservative Party welcomes new members from a wide variety of backgrounds provided they share our aims and values. Local associations have a process to approve, or reject, members who apply to join and we support them in that work to ensure they take action if needed”. I see that as an endorsement of the BCCA 58 per cent "no confidence" vote. I did not know of a Mr Conway until reading it the following day. Also the 51 per cent remain vote MP Grieve recites is utterly misleading as it came from a statistical analysis by Dr Hanretty of East Anglia University who estimated constituency results based socio/economic factors analysis of actual South Bucks referendum counting areas election leave poll results. He's an acknowledged expert. However if you google him/referendum he says that individual constituency estimated have a 2 in 3 chance – 66 per cent of being more than one per cent wrong. So our MP was wrong to use it. Dr Hanretty also says some 70 per cent of Labour constituencies and 77 per cent of Conservative constituencies voted leave. 63 per cent of all UK constituencies including SNP and Lib. in the whole UK. Why are our tax funded MPs denying this democratic vote?
Dennis Elsey, Beaconsfield

MP should announce he will stand down
The report in last week’s Bucks Free Press bears little resemblance as to what happened at the AGM of Beaconsfield Constituency Conservative Association (BCCA). Just one former member of UKIP attended and had anyway re-joined the Conservative Party. Attendees at the AGM were carefully checked against the current members list. When your MP votes repeatedly against his party three line whip on Brexit matters, has a meeting with the French Brexit minister in Westminster, and stands up in Parliament saying he is ashamed of his own party, it is little wonder members of BCCA were upset and decided to attend the AGM. This year 364 members attended the AGM instead of just 80 members in 2018. Dominic Grieve was elected again in 2017 on a Conservative manifesto which said we would come out of Europe. Dominic voted in favour of Article 50 of the Withdrawal Agreement but has since obstructed implementation of the will of the people. Yes, the referendum result in 2016 was close, but a record number of British people voted. David Cameron, then Prime Minister, said the result would be binding. As a former Political Chairman of BCCA, and a member of BCCA for some 47 years, I find it hard to understand why Dominic Grieve did not immediately accept the result of the confidence motion (182-131) and announce he will stand down at the next election. His predecessor Tim Smith acted quickly and honourably when his actions were deemed unacceptable by his constituents.
Caroline Strafford, Beaconsfield

Consider a principled MEP
It seems likely that a long term extension to our membership will be needed in order for the Prime Minister to negotiate an acceptable deal to leave the European Union. If this is the case then the UK will need to participate in the European Union Elections on 23 May. Hence it may be useful to see what some of our MEPs have been up to in the past 4 years. In 2015 the England South-East region elected 4 UKIP members, 3 Tories, and 1 each Labour, Lib Dem and Green. The Labour, Lib Dem and Green MEPs have been working away to make the European Union better and to retain our place there. One Tory, Richard Ashworth had the Tory whip withdrawn in October 2017 for daring to criticise the lack of progress on the Brexit negotiations. He then resigned from the Tories and now sits in the European People’s Party block (EPP). Interestingly the Tories as a group were affiliated to the pro-EU EPP until David Cameron withdrew his party as he had promised the Eurosceptics in the UK Parliament. This was in return for their votes to make him leader in 2005. Richard Ashworth appears to be a consistent MEP. The other two have remained with the Tory party. However, out of the 4 UKIP members elected in 2015 only one remains in the party. The best known, Nigel Farage resigned as it seems he didn’t like the subsequent leadership of the party after he himself had stood down. Farage sits as an Independent although he has announced he has formed a new party. Further his replacement as UKIP leader Diane James resigned as leader and subsequently from UKIP very soon after her election. She now sits as an Independent. The third Janice Atkinson was expelled from UKIP following an expenses fraud investigation in 2015. This leaves only one surviving SE England UKIP member of the 4, Raymond Finch. A rather poor success rate. If we have elections on 23 May voters might wish to consider who is likely to be an appropriate, consistent and principled MEP. In particular voters may wish to consider this in the light of the activities of our MEPs in the last 4 years.
Dr Nick Jarrett, Marlow

MP has not lived up to his title
In the “Letters from Westminster” and your article last week, Dominic Grieve claimed that the loss of a vote of confidence by his local party was due to a hundred person insurgency of ex UKIP members and that he “did not wish to be at odds with his constituency party” but seeks a second referendum. Dominic’s claim that the move against him at the BCCA AGM was a concerted campaign by ex-UKIP people is simply not true. In fact it was John Strafford, a long-standing Conservative Party member, an ex-BCCA chairman, ex-area chairman and ex-regional chairman, who has been coordinating the spontaneous uprising amongst local Conservative Party Members since July 2018. Furthermore, John explained to Dominic last summer that he was the focus for many constituents who are angry at Dominic’s repudiation of his election commitments, which they regard as unacceptable. The AGM was attended by 345 local party members and included perhaps a handful of ex-UKIP members. One can judge for oneself whether Dominic knew that his “ex UKIP” contention was true. Around 72 per cent of Conservative Party members are in favour of leaving the EU, the Single Market and the Customs Union and indeed leaving on WTO terms. That was the reason why Dominic lost the vote of confidence at the BCCA AGM by 58 per cent to 42 per cent. What Dominic Grieve fails to acknowledge or accept is that he stood on a Conservative Party manifesto and a personal message to constituents in the 2017 election which committed him to honour ”the result of the referendum”, leave the Single Market, leave the Customs Union and acknowledged that “no deal was better than a bad deal”. Whilst MPs should exercise their judgment on the issues of the day, that does not extend to seeking election on a series of clear commitments and then doing everything in their power to undermine the implementation of those specific commitments. Democracy cannot work if electors cannot rely on MPs to honour their party manifesto and personal election commitments. Electors can have no confidence in an MP who stands for election on one basis and then actively campaigns and manipulates the Parliamentary system to achieve the reverse result. If Dominic is not deselected, Beaconsfield Conservatives will not have an honourable Conservative Party candidate to vote for at the next election, because huge numbers of BCCA members will no longer support the Right Honourable Dominic Grieve, who has not lived up to such a title.

Roger Kendrick, Farnham Common