This is what you have been writing to us about this week. To send your own letter, email bfpletters@london.newsquest.co.uk or send it to Bucks Free Press, Loudwater Mill, Station Road, Loudwater, HP10 9TY.

Article was very informative

The article about Jack Needham was interesting, informative and entertaining (BFP nostalgia, February 14).

It brought back many memories of Desborough Road as someone born in Richardson Street and have lived in High Wycombe since.

I am always amused whenever I go along Desborough Road to see the sign outside the Needham 's site. Does anyone know the date the bingo and snooker halls closed, before the site was demolished many years later as the article never gave that information?

Norman Keen, address withheld

We should have mini roundabouts

For the last 40 years Bucks County Council has been working to improve the flow of traffic along the A40 London Road. I have studied the current £6 million A40 road improvement project which appears to be mainly cosmetic and unlikely to make any significant improvement to what is a very congested road.

All the junctions currently controlled by traffic signals will stay the same and traffic volumes are likely to increase as a consequence of the planned housing and retail developments.

A recent study has proved conclusively that pollution from vehicles is considerably less at junctions controlled by roundabouts compared with junctions controlled by traffic signals and that traffic flow is improved when signals are removed.

It is very noticeable that at the A40 junctions with roundabouts, i.e. Gordon Road, Hatters Lane and Station Road, traffic flow is much improved, and delays considerably less, compared against junctions controlled with traffic signals.

It makes sense therefore to include in the current plan the replacement of the roundabout at the Gomm Road junction with the old roundabout and replace the signals at the A40 junctions with Cock Lane, Abbey Barn Road, Hammersley Lane and Rayners Avenue with mini roundabouts. This change would do more to improve traffic flow than the changes intended in the current plan.

Arnie Parr, High Wycombe

Moved by compassion

I've been moved by Phil Jones' articles in the BFP letters page.

The latest one posted on the 14.02.2020 on 'Impact of Brexit' shows again that he does get it. His high sensibility on the subject and his compassion towards EU27 citizens in the UK, is what the country needs more of to raise awareness on an issue that is too often dismissed, and which affects millions of people.

If only there were more Brits like Phil helping to put the record straight.

Laure Om

Has the wrong person resigned?

I just wanted to air my disappointment over how our WDC leader has behaved and my sadness over the resignation of Bill Reid, our town clerk.

Mistaken identity can happen - surely not though when you work in the same team, same corridor - in such a situation identity could very quickly be checked. A small detail, however an important one.

I wonder how many other occasions the WDC leader has not made the effort to check the details before acting? If a close colleague is not valued, what worth us citizens?

The WDC values talk of "... excellent people-centred services… it lies at the very heart of everything we do in employing people… we are opposed to discrimination and harassment…"

Maybe I am wrong, surely the leader should be the chief role model in ensuring the values are credible and delivered?

So the leader makes an unforgivable error of judgement and our town clerk - a loyal, hardworking, committed and genuine citizen resigns. A sad loss.

Well, WDC leader, a case of wrong person resigned?

Chris Jefferies, address withheld

The confusion of council leader

After reading the correspondence about Katrina Wood’s confusion of the two William Reids I remembered the story of how, after he had left her without warning and defected to Russia, Kim Philby’s wife first learnt from MI6 officers that her husband had been a Soviet spy, and not a respected British government official.

Did Mrs Janet Reid, after reading Katrina Wood’s first letter to the BFP, think to herself that the kindly husband who led very popular walks, and with whom she had shared a house for many years, had been deceiving her too?

Did she say to herself: ‘My God! All this time our life has been a lie - a sham! He’s been leading a double life as a respectable town clerk with an office just down the hallway to Katrina Wood!’

I am sure I am not the only BFP reader feeling concern over this.

Name and address withheld

Intelligent answers needed

What is the point of having green belt land if the government can build on it when they like?

What is the point of having grade I and II listed buildings if the government can destroy or move them when they please?

What is the point of building an expensive railway when it will be out of date before it is completed?

I would dearly love an intelligent answer to these questions.

Simon Bird, Marlow

Valentine’s letter to the earth

I asked the Earth what would it take for us to fall in love again, for our hearts to beat as one.

Could I ever make it up to her? Could my betrayal ever be undone? She asked me to sit quietly with her and listen. If time's oldest love affair was to be rekindled, then I must hear her out.

She cried from a broken heart, saying she felt valued only for her usefulness. She felt objectified, worthless, other than to meet my never-ending needs, and with so little regard for her own. How had we so easily moved from a marriage of equals to the abuser and the abused? She said our deep connection had been lost when I began looking at her from the outside, instead of feeling her from the inside.

For the healing to begin, I needed to mourn the deep wounding I had caused and to recognise that she now lay exhausted, barely able to offer her gifts of abundance and renewal. I must understand that what I had done to her I had done to myself. Only then could I ask “What can I do to make this right? What is my true love, the Earth, asking me to do?”

The answer so simple. She is asking me to change, for everything to change; for us to find an entirely new way of living together, one that understands her natural limits; that understands that she cannot give unless she is also given to; that she cannot protect unless she also is protected.

She is asking us to tread lightly upon her, to consume less, to fly less, to discover a richer world that exploits less, and instead values the needs of all living beings. She can only be as bountiful as we allow her to be. She must be allowed to thrive, in order for us to thrive.

She is saying it is no longer enough to merely recycle. We are beyond that. It is no longer enough to sit back, and hope others will come up with the solutions. To make the change, we have to BE the change.

And being that change means daring to leave our comfort zone and demand of our political leaders the radical changes that are so clearly needed. We must demand that they restore her to her rightful place of centre stage, knowing full well that if she is not billed as the star of the show then one day there will be no show.

When a romance ends, people often say, “There's plenty more fish in the sea.” Yet if we do not succeed in repairing our love affair with the Earth, that saying will be as empty as the sea itself.

So, am I worthy of asking, “Be mine, my sweet Earth?”

Only time will tell.

Anonymous Extinction Rebellion member, Chilterns Chapter

No status of European Citizen

As far as I am aware, there is no status of European Citizen in the EU (RE: ‘EU citizens are not hypothetical’, BFP letters January 31). If there were I would expect there to be European embassies or at least consulates in foreign countries to assist its citizens in difficulties. Perhaps Phil can educate me on where they exist or if anybody is defined as a European citizen on their passport. Phil’s “European citizen” would therefore seem to be ‘a postulation for the purposes of his argument, without assumption of its truth’ or a ‘groundless assumption’ – i.e., hypothetical.

Unless Phil is using a different dictionary than I am, and words mean what he wants them to mean.

In which case it would appear he is already down the rabbit hole with Alice, the Red Queen and all the other characters from the pages of Lewis Carroll and I have no wish to join him.

Perhaps the un-named letter-writer’s concern over cocaine use in the EU will be mollified by Phil’s assertions that my suggestions for the cause are actually the reason for an expected reduction of the problem. Maybe time will tell.

PS. Why does so much of the media refer to the UK being in the EU for nearly 50 years? It has only been since 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty (on which it did not have a referendum).

Is there a general loss of short-term memory, a sort of collective Alzheimer’s or simply a case of ‘if it’s said enough times it must be true’? That seems to be the general modus operandi of the megalomaniac control freaks of today.

P.D. Somerville, High Wycombe

Help us find our friend

A group of former students who attended Slough College studying Business Studies between 1966 – 1968 have recently got back together after a break of some 50 years. That is all of us except one, who we are trying to track down but to date to no avail.

The person concerned is John Hayward who attended Dr Challoner’s Grammar School and who lived at Brockhurst Farmhouse, Lye Green Road, Chesham.

Whilst at Slough, John was employed by Delta Metal Company in Birmingham, and was a keen supporter of West Bromwich Albion.

We know John has a younger sister, but I am afraid that is about the extent of our knowledge.

If any of your readers can throw any light on John’s whereabouts, would they please get in touch as we would dearly like to meet up with John again.

Phil Ball, address withheld

Email bfpletters@newsquest.co.uk or call 01494 755 000 if you can help