Letters - This is what you wrote to us about this week

If you would like to send a letter, email bfpletters@london.newsquest.co.uk.

Make the most of gift aid

Congratulations on your continuing promotion of fundraising events supporting charity (Doc Martin backing Macmillan’s coffee morning and Duncan Levene supporting Parkinson’s UK by participation in this year’s Great North Run in last week’s edition).

Fundraisers are not always aware that gift aid provides an excellent way of increasing the funds which they raise for charity. HM Revenue and Customs give an extra 25 per cent of donations from individuals who pay tax and sign up to gift aid. So a charity can reclaim £2.50 from HMRC on an individual’s donation of £10.

A simple sponsorship form can be used by a fund raiser to collect donations eligible for gift aid in a standard format published by HMRC on its website. Alternatively sponsorship can be raised online.

Last year the HM Treasury Minister Robert Jenrick confirmed the availability of gift aid in relation to coffee mornings – “if you ask people to make a donation nd offer them a coffee or cake you could be making 25 per cent or more on the funds you raise.”

Successive governments have been keen to encourage the take up of gift aid and fund raisers should take advantage of it.

So if any of your readers are fundraising for charity, they should also think of gift aid and talk to the charity they are supporting about it.

Richard Baldwin MBE, Seer Green

Don’t throw us over the Brexit cliff-edge

Yet again another traumatic week for the Conservative party and for Steve Baker MP. The water carrier for Rees Mogg and Boris Johnson.

Steve Baker is now advocating an unholy alliance between the Conservative Party and the Brexit Party limited. The Brexit party leader Nigel Farage published the now infamous and dubious poster declaring the UK was at "Breaking Point". A poster many considered racist, and published just hours before the murder of Jo Cox MP by the far right and racist Thomas Mair.

Philip Hammond the recent Chancellor and respected figure in the Conservative Party has described his own party of "turning into a right wing faction.

I would urge Steve Baker to take heed of Philip Hammond and indeed of Jo Johnson, the PM’s own brother who resigned from Government declaring he has no trust in Boris Johnson.

Steve Baker do not throw your constituents over the Brexit cliff edge. We didn't vote for a "no deal" or an alliance with the Brexit Party. We do not deserve to endure the hardships as highlighted in your Governments own papers.

Further Steve Baker, you may do well not to refer to the European withdraw bill as "The Surrender Bill". We are not at war, least of all with our European friends and allies. It's this type of inflammatory language that gives rise to racist attacks and unrest. You would do well to apply restraint and thought before such future comments.

Steve Baker you may have a deep distaste for Europe and the wishes of your own constituents, who incidentally voted to remain in Europe. If so take the honourable decision and resign.

Steve Sturgess, address withheld

Proroguing Parliament for five weeks is probably not long enough

What sort of democracy allows the votes of 300 people to block those of 17.4 million?

In response to the letter from Alex, Windsor (Sept 6th) I suggest reading up on world history to see what coup d'état are really like. Coup leaders and 'tin-pot-dictators' do not repeatedly ask for general elections!

This Parliament has failed to "...make sure we leave the European Union in the best way possible" and sitting for an extra 5 days or indeed demanding further delays to Brexit will not resolve anything. Trust goes both ways and opposition and rebel MPs have overturned centuries of precedent trying to ignore the referendum result that they legislated for! It is HM Government who should have responsibility to negotiate international treaties, not the British Parliament.

This Parliament is undermining British interests with their actions and blaming the government for failing to get a deal. It's not in the EUs interest to give any concessions when they know that the PM is being forced into extending membership by his own Parliament. And the Labour policy is like something out of a Christmas cracker. A Parliament which has repeatedly made clear what it doesn't want but cannot decide what it DOES want cannot move forward. A Parliament that doesn't have confidence in its PM and won't pass his legislation but doesn't want to have a no-confidence vote or a general election because they are rightly afraid of their seats and the alternative PM is in deadlock and NOT functioning.

I know I'm not alone in thinking that proroguing this Parliament for 5 weeks is probably not long enough in these circumstances.

Mark Skoyles, Marlow

Park and Ride is fantastic for hospital outpatients

In answer to John Laker’s question (BFP letters page, September 6) about what use is the latest Park & Ride route can I say it is VERY useful to the many outpatients who need to attend the hospital for appointments or treatment. I would guess that there are many more of them than those with dental appointments at surgeries near the train station.

The new route has been in use for several months now and the change was publicised well before it came into effect. It has, in fact, gone back to almost what it was before the terminus was moved to Handy Cross.

It was very frustrating for hospital patients to drive by the hospital as the bus came down Marlow Hill but not be able to get off. Instead they had sit on the bus as it drove to the station, all through the town and the sit in the bus station until the bus departed for Handy Cross via the hospital.

I have found the Park & Ride service very useful and thank the operators for running what, to me, seems a very useful and efficient service. And yes, the drivers are mostly helpful and cheerful - thanks guys!

Name withheld, Beaconsfield

In defence of Mr Dominic Grieve MP

In today’s BFP letter page (September 6) Kenneth Muller says he wishes to ‘respond’ to letters from Dominic Grieve and Michael Leslie. Mr Grieve’s letter had described his maternal lineage and early education, and Mr Leslie had written a brief general endorsement of Mr Grieve, so I was intrigued to know what ‘response’ Mr Muller could make to either man.

Mr Muller went on to make some valuable comments about the need for greater control of, and democratic accountability on the part of, the EU. But for the most part he simply repeats many of the criticisms and mantras Leavers pull out every time they wish to justify leaving.

There can be little doubt by now that the narrative of the Leave campaign – that the negotiations would be effortless, liberating and profitable - was based on lies. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Davis#On_Brexit, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-david-davis-exact-same-benefits-promise-article-50-theresa-may-a7657426.html and https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=469122363612705.) This is the reason we are now being pushed towards a no-deal Brexit – something which was never mentioned during the referendum when we were told they would be the easiest trade negotiations in human history.

The idea that Remainers who point out lies during the referendum campaign are ‘patronising the British voter’s common sense’ has been aired on here a number of times and is a wonderful move by Leavers – ‘we mislead the voters with a snowstorm of disinformation and then, if anyone complains, we say they are condescending to the people we lied to.’ This is like a used car salesman promising to sell a man a Rolls Royce and then turning up with a Mini and when the customer’s wife complains this is not what was ordered the salesman says: ‘here – don’t patronise your husband’s common sense – he knew the Rolls was a Mini!’ What were we promised during the referendum that is still on offer? How CAN someone exercise common sense if they have no reliable data from one side to base their decision on?

Some Leavers try to minimise this by saying the systematic and widespread lying during the referendum was merely part of exaggerated claims made by both sides and that they are ‘respecting the will of the Electorate/the British people’. There are web pages (I have put two above) devoted to the sometimes hilarious misstatements by Leave during and after 2016. What were the lies made by the Remain side that are comparable with those by the Leavers? (A lot of the so-called ‘Project Fear’ predictions have come true already.) Who was deceitful and patronising - the people who warned that leaving the EU would be a painful severance, or the people who promised us £350m on the side of a bus as well as all the other lies?

Mr Muller seems to use ‘sermonise’ in the sense given by the OED: “2. transitive. To preach a sermon to; to talk seriously or earnestly to, ‘preach’ to, ‘lecture’.” ‘Transitive’ means Mr Grieve and Mr Leslie must be directing their ‘sermonising’ AT someone. Neither Mr Grieve nor Mr Leslie appear to be directing a sermon – merely stating their view (unanswerably on the part of Mr Grieve). Calling well-explained objections to Brexit ‘sermonising’ is name-calling instead of a reasoned rebuttal.

Mr Muller says the EU position has been steadfast ‘aggressive determination to cause the UK government as many difficulties as possible to negotiate a mutually workable and politically acceptable exit deal’. Can he give us some examples of this? European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said he regrets not having “intervened and interfered” in the referendum to “destroy the lies” that circulated during the campaign. (https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/jean-claude-juncker-brexit-david-cameron-eu-intervene-vote-video/) Currently, far from making difficulties, the EU is directing millions of Euros towards mitigating the damage from Brexit, to the remaining 27 members.

Mr Muller also says: ‘Their (i.e. Dominic Grieve and others) contemplation of joining forces with Jeremy Corbyn … is truly unbelievable and unforgivable.’ In fact Dominic Grieve has refused out-of-hand to ‘contemplate’ it: “… in trying to stop a no-deal Brexit it is not my purpose to help him into Downing Street.” (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/aug/16/dominic-grieve-jeremy-corbyn-no-10-labour-brexit .) (It could be said he would do better to do what Americans call ‘nose-holding’ and join with Corbyn on a purely temporary basis.)

Dominic Grieve, in voting along against his Prime Minister has done what Boris Johnson and the ERG have done on a number of occasions. Today’s New York Times says: ‘When the British stiffen, they tend not to relent. Those 21 Tories are heroes. Where in Trumpland are 21 Republicans with spines?’ (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/opinion/boris-johnson-brexit-election.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Mr Muller’s letter is supposed to be from a man who voted to remain but then was so disappointed with the conduct of Conservative Remainers that he reversed his position. Strangely most of his letter seems to be identical in tone and content to the letters that veteran UKIPpers post here.

Lawrence Linehan, Wooburn Green

Thank you for your kind contributions

The Rethink Mental Illness charity stall held on the Town Hall Green, Beaconsfield, on Saturday September 7, raised £206.70. Many thanks to all those people who made donations and purchases. The next stalls selling books and bric-a-brac, weather permitting will be on the Town Hall Green Beaconsfield on October 4/5 commencing at 9am.

Sally Busby, group chairman South Bucks Rethink Mental Illness