Your letters - August 6, 2010

Thanks for the custom car show

I WOULD like to thank club members, family, friends and the general public for their continued help and support of our Custom Car Show held last weekend.

As I write this, Jason our treasurer, is counting the pennies, which will be donated equally this year between; Sussex Air Ambulance, Agape Family Trust, cardiac ward at the Conquest Hospital and St Michael's Hospice, Hastings.

Finally, thank you to the local residents of Catsfield for their tolerance and understanding as we descend on their lovely and normally peaceful village for the weekend.

Kim Freeman

Chairman, 1066 Cruisers Rod and

Custom Car Club

Winchelsea ash tree planting date

In his letter last week Peter McMullin stated that he believed that the present Ash tree in Winchelsea, which replaced the one John Wesley preached under, was planted in 1910. This is incorrect. The original tree was not blown down until 1927.

The present tree was grown from a graft taken from the original tree.

This information is detailed in Malcolm Pratt's book 'Winchelsea A Port of Stranded Pride'.

Hugh Sutton

by email

We need consistency in constituencies

The "Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill" has highlighted some serious disparities between the sizes of parliamentary constituencies throughout Britain.

The worst example sees a Scottish Western Isles constituency (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) with only 22,000 voters compared to the whopping 109,000 electorate on the Isle of Wight. This trend continues throughout Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales with their average constituency size being around 62,000 compared to the much higher English average of nearly 72,000. Looking locally, both Bexhill & Battle (79,000 voters) and Hastings & Rye (78,000 voters) are significantly larger than the national average.

Historically the English have been under represented in the Westminster parliament, this being the price paid to keep political harmony in the UK. However the landscape has now changed considerably with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all having their own devolved parliaments and assemblies, so why continue to over compensate them with the number of Westminster MPs they have?

There are many things wrong with the current voting system, but at least we should expect that a vote cast in one part of the country will carry as much weight as those cast elsewhere. Therefore we should welcome the coalition Government's bill to equalise the size of constituencies, as being a step in the right direction to having our votes counted fairly.

Clive Bishop

Asten Fields, Battle

Lost book is treasured by family

LAST year the Rye Observer featured an article about a journal written by my uncle.

It was about life as a boy in the village of Northiam 1905-26 called Time Was, Memories of a Bygone Age, printed as a small book and sold in Northiam newsagents.

On July 7 this year I gave a talk at a club I belong to which meets at the Taplin Centre in Maze Hill.

I don't know how it happened but I have lost or mislaid the original journal on leaving the premises.

This is very worrying for all my family as it is a unique piece of family history and cannot be replaced.

It was in a clear plastic bag along with a plain brown hard cover, the printed Time Was booklets numbers one and two, and a roll of photocopies of various pictures from Time Was.

I have informed the police, The Taplin Centre and anyone who I can think of that was at the meeting but nobody has located it.

It may have been dropped outside the centre before I got into the car.