madam, Here is my response to the letters which appeared in The Ross Gazette, April 14th, first to Charlotte, two well made points and two areas that UKIP are attending to directly.
Firstly we will reinstate student grants for all but the very wealthy; parents in normal jobs have to be able to afford to send their youngsters to university and Students simply shouldn't start their working life with massive debts, it's one area where society in the UK has taken a backward step in recent years and we would change that.
Our defence policy clearly states that our view of the UK armed forces is not that of a huge world dominating force, but that of a top notch collection of specialised fighting forces such as the SAS and Marines and to that end they will be equipped to cover the roles they supply with top class equipment, anything else is a dereliction of political duty.
To Bill, Good tough questions and I won't duck them.
I have spoken to various growers about what they get from the use of polytunnels, and as a party that supports moving towards self sufficiency in providing foodstuffs, I support their use.
Not overuse though, I am told that the first few and last few weeks of production of strawberries for example provides an inferior product, but fills the supermarket shelves, which to me seems to be a waste. I am not sure that polytunnels and tourism are incompatible, if we buy into the need for them.
Not so with wind farms, the UKIP view is that they do blight the landscape, but again as with polytunnels, if they were efficient and provided a real service we would have to consider their use as viable. However with the rates of efficiency being scandalously low, with the very real suspicion that most suppliers are in it for the juicy grants that come with the agreed development, and with little or no concern for maintenance and decommissioning obligations, we have to say no.
UKIP is a people party and our stance on foxhunting is clear, we would repeal the law, but demand better regulation. We understand and sympathise with people who oppose this, but we have a duty to be up front and state our aims.
Every village school that closes down is a social and environmental disaster. Both for Tory and Labour, there is an ethos of big is right, small is wrong, it's all about efficiencies. We would regenerate villages through supply of real low cost housing and real new jobs which would have the benefit of supplying pupils for village schools, but we would also ensure their survival over a certain base size by implementing group or shared efficiencies within the region.
I believe that the stated aim of all the other candidates in this constituency of protecting local post offices is true, but the unfortunate hypocrisy of this is that the only reason they are closing is because of EU competition laws and only UKIP supports coming out of the EU, so only we can say we are actively working to stop the closure of local post offices.