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 as all staff are still working from home.

Dangerous school parking in village needs addressing

I want to highlight a long recurring problem - and risk to lives - outside our schools, twice a day.

Too many parents are driving to schools and leaving their cars on dangerous bends, brows of hills and of course close to children streaming in and out of schools at 9am and around 3pm.

A clear example are the parents who park on a bend and brow of a hill outside the school in Cock Lane, Tylers Green, and also along Rose Avenue, Hazlemere, by the other district school.

Some park on yellow lines.

Who don’t they realise the dangers they are creating and why don’t they park just a little further away in safer places?

Traffic is forced to the centre of the road as it reaches the brow of a hill and sharp bend in Cock Lane.

Call me an old fossil but when I was a lad we walked to school and, parents who were wealthy enough to have cars, acted more safely.

At the schools I’ve mentioned here I strongly suspect that the parents have driven for between one and three minutes to get there.

Are they and their children too unfit to walk for perhaps up to 15 to 20 minutes twice a day?

These are very local schools taking children from, in many cases, homes that are less than half a mile away.

The Cock Lane school (very close to a car park) has a large notice asking parents to park more sensibly and safely. Many parents ignore this request.

I suggest the police make occasional visits to at least warn the offenders or even book them.

Name and address withheld

Travellers are disadvantaged in our society

Travellers are one of the most marginalised and disadvantaged groups in society.

For example, they may be more likely to fail to complete education to 18; more likely to have a mother who has only a primary level of education; more likely to be excluded from school; more likely to suffer from prejudice and discrimination.

Trying to help Travellers can be difficult because of their small numbers, because of not knowing where they are going to be, and because they can be suspicious of authority.

The European Commission has identified Roma and Travellers as groups in need of help.

The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency’s 2020 survey, “Roma and Travellers in six countries”, that included the UK, said its findings present “a bleak but familiar picture of discrimination and deprivation. We hope they encourage policymakers to step up their efforts to ensure a better future for Europe’s biggest minority group”.

The survey found that “in Sweden, every fifth Roma and Traveller, including their children (22 per cent), say that they went hungry to bed at least once in the last month”.

All six countries will miss the 2020 targets under European cooperation in education and training, as far as the surveyed Roma and Travellers are concerned.

It raised concerns about compliance with the EU’s Racial Equality Directive, which also applies to health care.

Meanwhile, the European Social Fund can be used to help implement provisions of the European Pillar of Social Rights for minority groups, and support the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

Phil Jones, European Movement UK member, Bourne End

HS2 letter is ‘vague and woolly feel-good stuff’

Mark Skoyles’ letter in last week’s print BFP (letters page, September 18, ‘Council should be embracing HS2’) is a strange production.

Which 19th century person said steam trains went at 5mph faster than a horse pulled boat?

Commentators at the time were amazed at how fast steam trains went and William Huskisson was killed at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 partly because no one had ever seen anything that would go as fast as Stephenson’s ‘Rocket.’

He says: ‘We cannot expect to prosper in the 21st century with 19th infrastructure’. Surely we have gone through the 20th Century with that infrastructure, and some parts are earlier – the West Wycombe Road is 18th century and still in use, and major local roads are Roman Roads in origin.

Mr Skoyles says: ‘Network Rail report alternative existing network upgrades would cause three times the destruction while only providing 50 per cent of the capacity of HS2. I’m inclined to believe them rather than a few retired rail engineers in the pay of #STOPHS2.’

Mr Skoyles may be right but I would like to know where Network Rail said this.

The (leaked) Oakervee Report which reviewed HS2, was not optimistic – concluding amongst other things that costs could reach £106bn.

Likewise the government’s Infrastructure & Projects Authority (IPA), which uses colour-coding to measure delivery and cost certainties of major projects, after five years of assessing HS2 as amber/red (‘delivery in doubt’), changed HS2 this year to red (delivery, in terms of time and budget were ‘unachievable’).

Mr Skoyles says: ‘have you tried contacting your bank or utilities during lockdown?’ Yes I have – it is possible to do this without the assistance of a high speed train, using the phone or the internet – I have been paying bills and transferring money between accounts online during the lockdown. (An HS train is not essential for the other human activities Mr Skoyles mentions either.)

Why does Mr Skoyles put inverted commas round the word ‘destroyed’ in the sentence: ‘The idea that HS2 shouldn’t be done because it’s “destroying” 0.01 per cent of UKs ancient woodland … ’

*Isn’t* woodland ‘destroyed’ if it’s made into a railway? How is that comparable to straightening the chairs on the Titanic? Where does he get the figure of 0.01 per cent of UK ancient woodland from?

A lot of Mr Skoyles’ statistics are vague and seem to be woolly feel-good stuff similar to what we get from the Prime Minister (a man notoriously unafraid of hugely expensive infrastructure - remember Boris Island, the Thames Bridge or the bridge across the Irish Sea?).

Like a true c/Conservative Mr Skoyles blames disagreement on troublemakers and calls them out – there are the ‘few retired rail engineers in the pay of #STOPHS2’ mentioned above, but also: ‘This environmentalist argument is driven by a hardcore who seem to want us all to live in Bronze Age ‘communes’ (with 24hr Wi-Fi of course)’. (Witty stuff too!)

Mr Skoyles tells us: ‘The government is borrowing investment capital to build HS2 which will boost productivity in this country for the next 100-200 years.’

Who can predict productivity in 20 years let alone 200?

He says: ‘It’s not money that can simply be ‘given to NHS’.

Why not, and where does Mr Skoyles get the figures ‘20,000 skilled jobs needed to build it (and) thousands of jobs … to run the service?’ Could we have some detail here?

Mr Skoyles says HS2 will provide a direct benefit to anyone who uses the Chiltern line, ‘with more frequent and reliable services into Marylebone’ and users of the M40 or A40 into London ‘should also notice less congestion’.

This seems debatable, not least as it assumes HS2 will be the first railway or motorway in history, not to encourage development and commuting along its route, into nearby major cities, thereby generating more traffic.

This is not really a local issue but Mr Skoyles also says: ‘… anyone who uses the M1 or M6 too once HS3 is completed (‘should also notice less congestion’).’

The M1 links London and eventually Newcastle. The M6 starts near Rugby, linking the Midlands to Glasgow. Both roads run roughly north to south.

HS3 is generally used to mean a possible railway line running roughly east to west linking Hull and Liverpool via Manchester and Sheffield – why ‘should’ users of the M1 and M6 benefit from the HS3 line?

There may be a case for HS2 but I have not heard it yet and I feel Mr Skoyles fails to make one here – a man with his knowledge of the 19th century will know whom I am quoting when I say his letter seems to be partly the work of ‘a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.’

Lawrence Linehan, Wooburn Green

Attitude is an example of another big problem

Roy Craig’s attitude in BFP (letters page, September 18, ‘Bemused by last week’s letter’) was an example of another problem mentioned by Richard Bristow, aka Bystander, formerly of Uxbridge court.

On 16 November 2007, Bristow wrote about the “constant tabloid-pleasing tweaking of the criminal law that has greatly increased the length of sentences without proper plans being made as to where these prisoners are to go”.

Mr Craig’s belief that the judiciary “seems to favour the criminal far too much”, and then saying, “I have no faith in our justice system to be able to hand out suitable sentences”, was an exquisite example of a problem that bedevilled the courts in the Blair era.

“At a time when most crime is falling, the public are convinced that it is out of control, and they are equally convinced that the judiciary has gone soft despite evidence that points to the opposite conclusion”, wrote Bristow on the 19th of June 2006.

Bristow’s words on 9 July 2006 could have been written for Mr Craig today.

Mr Craig’s view “is held by a lot of people these days, but without doubting his sincerity, I think that he has got it wrong...

“He entirely misunderstands our function. We are there to operate the law as enacted by Parliament.

“The Bench Book gives all of the many criteria that must be met if we are to impose custody.

“We must give reasons in open court.

“We follow a structured sentencing process, considering whether there is any alternative to prison.

“We do not have the luxury of deciding between rehabilitation and punishment, but we must follow the law.

“The sentencing process is one in which we are directed by Parliament and guided by the higher courts and the Sentencing Guidelines Council.

“Not all of us like being so boxed in, but it’s the law, so it’s the way we have to do it”.

Phil Jones, Bourne End