This is what you have been writing to us about this week.

To send your own letter, email bfpletters@london.newsquest.co.uk. Please note, any letters sent to the Bucks Free Press office are only being picked up periodically during lockdown.

A Colston moment for Bucks?

As statues fall across the UK, isn’t it time that Buckinghamshire has its own Colston moment? Let change start in our schools, where children are still ‘selected’ at 11 for grammar schools and secondary modern schools.

Cyril Burt, the psychologist whose work underpins the test, was discredited 50 years ago. Was he a fraud? Was he simply a poor researcher? Who knows? But it’s time his influence headed into the river.

We know that the test discriminates against children from particular ethnic groups. We know, for example, that in some local schools, of 46 children who were known to be high achievers, only 7 ‘passed’ the test. The evidence of bias and discrimination mounts each year.

But the test continues – and continues to divide schools in High Wycombe along racial lines.

Across the world, people are realising that change must come and that discrimination must be tackled everywhere. Young people are leading the call for equity and a level playing field.

Our grammar schools have a key part to play in creating a cohesive and equal society and they have much to offer our whole community. And they need to be on the right side of history. Change will come and they could lead it.

Did you take part in the protests? Do you care deeply about discrimination? Write to your local grammar school, asking what they propose to do to bring about change. Urge them to do the right thing and consider how they can open themselves up to everyone.

We urge those schools to help to build a better world.

Katy Simmons, Burnham

Lockdown louts need shaming

We have all rightly praised the NHS Doctors & Nurses who have fought so hard for us during this awful time of Covid-19. We must also not forget the emergency services and essential services who have kept us going during this period. Top people, all.

However, there seems to be another group that needs to be 'outed' for their dangerous, selfish, unhealthy habits which appear to have grown during this time. These are:

- Drivers who for one reason or another deem it their right to use our uncluttered streets as their personal racetrack. The fact that they may kill someone by their reckless stupidity doesn't seem to occur to them. I'm sure this problem is prevalent throughout Wycombe, but this specifically refers to Tylers Green, Hazlemere and Penn, particularly the B474, usually at night. One hopes the police will take note and set up plain speed cameras to catch these idiots.

- Dog walkers who fail to clear up after their pets, or if they do then throw the bag in the bushes, hang it from a tree, or just leave it by a path. Why?

- Fly-tippers who have been very active during the lockdown. Penalties for this criminal act are a joke and should be increased to confiscation/crushing of vehicle, photo, naming and shaming in the local media together with photos of family members, fining [minimum £10,000] prison term of minimum two years and having to retake driving test before being allowed back on the road.

- Gardeners who blow their clients leaves onto the road instead of collecting and taking away. Why should the council be forced to clear up after them?

- People who throw their litter away instead of taking it home or putting it in the bins provided. Again, why?

Those who fall into the second paragraph categories above need reminding that it will be someone else who suffers through their ignorant selfish actions.

Name and address withheld

Is Marlow exempt from social distancing?

My husband and I made a short visit to the Recreation Ground in Gossmore Lane on Saturday and were shocked to see that people were making up their own rules with regard to social distancing in the open.

A group of six lads were playing football and sticking to the government guidelines but there were at least two other groups who were not.

One group of about ten people were close together sat on the grass with their bikes.

The other group however, started off with about twelve people with others joining them as they arrived. They looked as if they were settling for the afternoon as they even had a tent! Some more people arrived, and one lady did socially distance herself for about half an hour but then some of the men from the main group came over and she then joined the rest. By this time the group had increased to about twenty and included children.

Did they think that social distancing was one rule for them and one for the rest of us?

The one-way system on the payments in Marlow High Street is a total farce! The markers are far too small and on Saturday afternoon people were totally ignoring them!

Surely people don’t want to see many more from dying from this dreadful disease.

Name withheld, Marlow

The eyesore in Dean Street

Churchill Retirement Living is advertising its Peel Lodge retirement apartments as being in “the Georgian market town of Marlow made up of historic streets and an abundance of boutique shops and eateries all adding to the town’s unique charm”.

The picture on its web site shows some of the 19 advertising signs that litter its frontage on to Dean Street. There are, in addition, two large billboards erected without planning permission.

The visual impact upon this entrance to our town centre and its conservation area is dire. The company takes advantage of Marlow’s “unique charm” whilst selfishly ignoring planning regulations and littering the street with totally unnecessary signage.

Our planning authority has known of the illegal billboards for six months but they still deface Dean Street.

In this difficult time when the town council and the town’s businesses have made a great effort to make the town attractive to shoppers it is incumbent on Churchill Retirement Living to remove the eyesores it has inflicted on Marlow.

Martin Blunkell, chairman of the Marlow Society

Extinction rebellion protests

If the Extinction Rebellion activists regard themselves as civilised human beings, the self-proclaimed pinnacle of intelligent life, they ought to be able to recognise that they are the most unnatural specie on the entire planet. Without this unnatural existence, the vast majority would quite simply not survive because civilisation has decided that the way the natural world functions is unacceptable for its own existence.

To even think that it is possible for their unnatural world and the natural world to exist independently of each other is completely irrational. They both need the same fundamental necessities to survive, necessities obtained from the natural world. In nature, the survival of any specie depends on the demise of its least able to provide the necessities for another.

Civilised humanity does not accept this. Its aim is the survival of its least able by obtaining the necessities from the natural world by unnatural means.

Ironically, for the most part, it eventually obtained the energy to provide these unnatural means from nature’s waste products, the things for which nature had no further use, primarily coal, oil, flammable gas and the ability to control fire.

The idea that somehow civilised humanity can obtain the energy it requires to continue its unnatural existence from the thing nature uses for its own existence without affecting the natural world is nothing more than a pipe dream, the ultimate in wishful thinking. An assumption that either nature wastes a lot of energy or that humanity can use it better. The former is an illusion, the latter can only be to the detriment of nature.

Nature seems to have ways to limit the proliferation of any specie at the expense of too many of the others, particularly those providing its own necessities. Civilised humanity’s unnatural existence does not, except for annihilation by war.

Maybe viral pandemics are just one part of the natural world’s attempts to do just that. Something civilised humanity is unable to accept.

P.D. Somerville, High Wycombe

Love and kindness is so important

As another week passes and we ponder what we are and are not allowed to do, it’s perhaps time to focus on the future.

It might be uncertain, but one thing lockdown has made me sure of is that when we can freely move about and enjoy the fruits of life, we should grab it with both hands – indulge yourself before life returns and the fast lane beckons, and feel grateful for the little things.

The most important thing to give in life is the power of love and kindness. It’s immeasurable.

Rose Whitehead, Chalfont St Peter

Can BFP readers help?

I am trying to put together the history of the Newbury and District Sunday Football League and I am looking for a copy of a Berks and Bucks intermediate Sunday cup final programme or team sheet involving Elco FC2 vs 1 Globetrotters FC from season 1975/76 which was played at Wokingham town.

I believe Elco was a plastics company in the High Wycombe area.

William Fry, chairman of the Newbury and District Sunday Football League, Newbury

If you can help, get in touch with the BFP and we can put you in touch with Mr Fry

‘The EU wastes Britain’s money’

I write in response to Mr Timberlake and Mr Murphy (BFP letters page, May 29). I exposed a few facts about their beloved EU.

The fact is, Brussels wastes taxpayers’ money in a way that would not be tolerated in any other country.

The most notorious expense is the monthly jaunt by the European Parliament from its main home in Brussels to Strasbourg.

The travelling circus sees all MEPs journey 200 miles along with 1,000 staff and a dozen lorries loaded with their paperwork.

This costs about £180 million a year.

The British people have had enough of subordination to Brussels. It is a question of sovereignty. We have our own parliament, our own flag, our own army, our own national anthem.

We are not leaving Europe, we are leaving the rotten EU.

Leo Duggan, High Wycombe

A letter to reader and the PM

A LETTER to Neil Timberlake (BFP letters page, June 12) and Boris Johnson.

This letter is from Roger Dixon ex Sapper Royal Engineers born in Coventry 1935.

I am a citizen of the sovereign UK. God save the Queen.

Regarding the red and white snowflakes and Remainers they should move to the EU or China.

Three cheers for the NHS and frontline staff. God protect our fishermen, industry and waters from international pirates i.e. the EU etc.

Protect our first class industrial base from a long line of international crooks, copycats and scammers.

Roger Dixon, High Wycombe