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Cardiff needs more homes, not shops

I have yet to meet any Cardiffian who thinks our city really needs more shops, bars or student flats. So I was concerned to read Dylan Jones Evans’ enthusiastic support for the 200,000 sq ft of retail space and 50,000 sq ft of restaurants/bars in the proposed £500m redevelopment of the Red Dragon Centre in Cardiff Bay (Business Wales, Western Mail, April 6).

With our city centre and local shops all struggling to survive, and the continuing increase in online shopping sales, shouldn’t we be looking after the shops we already have? We seem to be stuck in a 1970s property development time warp instead of designing our city for the future.

In addition, the article needed an assessment of the carbon footprint of this development – will knocking down the Red Dragon Centre and the Motorpoint Arena, followed by building the new shops etc, help or hinder Cardiff becoming a carbon-neutral city by 2030? Both Extinction Rebellion Cardiff and School Strike for Climate have been campaigning locally for urgent action on our planet’s climate emergency.

So I’d suggest what Cardiff really needs is more homes that people can afford to buy or rent and more green spaces rather than more shops and bars. If you agree, please talk with your friends and family about this, consider writing to Cardiff Council and make your voice heard for the future of our city.

Penny Owen

Cardiff

Time to compromise over Brexit tangle

I wish that your correspondent Margaret Phelps was as passionate over the 74.5% who did not vote for a Welsh Assembly as she is for the 63% who did not vote to leave the EU. Then we might be able to have another referendum in order to get a better result!

Bryan Mitchell

Kilgetty

Shocked by malice towards the departed

I was shocked and disappointed in equal measure by Gwynoro Jones’ “disclosures” in your paper (April 8) vis-a-vis Gwynfor Evans. To have someone with a cheery face like Gwynoro being vindictive to a dead person is so sickening.

Ronnie Lewis

Crymych, Sir Benfro

What punishment for EU treason?

Welsh Conservative candidate Ross England claims that having greater loyalty to the EU than the UK is treasonous.

I plead guilty. What does he think should happen to me?

Cynog Dafis

Llandre, Ceredigion

We’ve no right to be righteous over Brunei

While Brunei’s introduction of “stoning to death”, as punishment for homosexuality is unacceptable in the modern age, calls to expel Brunei from the “all-righteous” Commonwealth of the former British Empire are ironic.

The British Empire was built upon an imperial design of a murderous campaign of attrocities, pitted against the people that would become the subjects of its colonies.

Within living memory, the Bengal famine of 1943 was engineered by the Empire and up to 3,000,000 perished, while in the Aden torture centres in the late 1960s, thousands of subjects of the Empire were tortured, with an unknown final death toll, to quell a minor uprising.

Rhidian Richard

Clydach, Swansea

British democracy swallowed by EU

While far from perfect, I have up until now believed that we are fortunate to have our hard-won democratic system.

A belief that has taken something of a pounding in recent times.

What seems to have been missed in the hullabaloo surrounding Brexit is the sheer scale of what has been signed away by politicians more interested in their own ambitions and priorities than those of the people they claim to represent.

It does not fill me with hope or joy to hear some European politician, of whom I have never heard, advising some breathless reporter what we in the UK must or must not do.

We should never by this time be contemplating taking part in EU elections.

But to further twist the knife, some EU politicians want to impose limits to what we can participate in the European Parliament. One could not make it up!

I am not a xenophobe by any stretch of the imagination. But I worked for 40 years, saw active service and volunteered for many years.

I did these things willingly and I will never take instruction from people whose priorities are so limited that they lack the vision to see that this place we used to call Britain is being swallowed up.

H Thomas

Neath

NHS suffering as a result of devolution

Re: the Chester NHS problem.Another example of the nonsense of our country’s devolution.

The health service in Wales is known to be inferior to the far-from-perfect English NHS, which the recent cross-border problem has highlighted.

The Chester example could be repeated further south. Without devolution, things could be simpler as all would be NHS.

LH Davies

Caldicot

Leisure centre closure ignores public’s views

I have serious concerns for democracy when a scrutiny motion is supported by all party members and a recommendation is made to cabinet to reject closing Pontllanfraith Leisure Centre – and is then rejected by the Labour cabinet.

Has the cabinet system in Caerphilly got so little regard for all the other elected members and the public of 5,700 who signed a petition supporting Pontllanfraith and Cefn Forest leisure centres remaining open a number of months ago? This is not the first time, with cabinet previously recommending the leisure strategy not going to full council to be discussed by 73 elected members, again a scrutiny committee decision ignored.

Do scrutiny views and the public count for nothing within Caerphilly when cabinet can veto decisions?

I hope the public will remember these decisions, especially when former MPs and the current MP marched through Blackwood with hundreds of residents against the closure of Pontllanfraith Centre in protest. But this is Caerphilly, which has raised council tax 6.95% and closed the public toilets, and the next local elections are not for three years.

Kevin Etheridge

Blackwood

‘Inverse socialism’ of Labour council group

The old saying “You couldn’t make it up” applies so aptly to Caerphilly Labour group on Caerphilly CBC.

On February 21, Labour decided, in a political vote, to increase council tax by 6.95% and cut £14m from services to the public, bringing the total cuts made by Caerphilly CBC to £103m in deprivation-ravaged Caerphilly.

Many would think that’s as bad as it could get, as the same Labour group, decided in 2016-17 to increase council tax by just 1% in the year of the local government elections. The 1% turned out to be the lowest in Wales by some margin. That was a political decision taken by the Labour group, possibly to help the election of a Labour council, in politically contentious Caerphilly CBC?

Fast-forward just 12 days to March 5 and cash-strapped Caerphilly Labour group decided in another political vote to increase rates of pay for fat cats in Caerphilly CBC by up to £5,300 a year and continue to make those increases for the next three years.

This political decision was taken just three days before the sixth birthday of the suspensions of senior managers of Caerphilly in the case of the unlawful pay awards.

The prevailing belief is that the rich have too little money and the poor have too much.

Could this be inverse socialism or an ill-conceived, ill-judged, narrow-minded and dictatorial political decision by the Labour group on Caerphilly CBC?

Graham Simmonds

Blackwood

Confusion over new referendum on Brexit

Some papers and readers are a little confused regarding another referendum.

Brexit was voted for way back in 2016.

Nobody thought that Theresa May would come back with a deal that both sides of the argument don’t want.

Now a second referendum will give the people a chance to vote on Mrs May’s deal or remain in the EU.

So where is the problem on democracy? After all, the country would have been lumbered with Mrs May if she got it through Parliament.

Andrew Nutt

Bargoed