Even though our football team did not triumph at Wembley, the Adver’s reporters certainly did.

The coverage in Monday’s paper was brilliant. The pictures, as ever, tell a key part of the story. But it’s the writing that lifts off the pages, at least for this reader. The build up, from County Ground to Wembley and back, is brilliantly described. Delight and devil are definitely both in the detail.

At breakfast today, I read out bits to our visitors from London. ‘Gosh’ said one, ‘what splendid writing for a local newspaper!’ My daughter and I made the trip to Wembley and your page by page reports exactly mirror the feelings we had, from flying high in the morning to that flat and sinking feeling by mid afternoon.

Your reporters’ writing, doubtless done under time pressure, is a fine example of emotion recollected in tranquillity. Terrific stuff. The build up, the fun, the good bits of play, the desperation, the outcome, and the post-match analysis, it’s all there.

We even enjoyed reading the views from the press box and the rueful but rightly upbeat reflections in your Comment column.

In ‘69, I was at the old Wembley when Town won, and read the Adver then too, but the coverage this time seems much better, a more complete reflection of the entire experience.

Maybe this is yet another case of how tragedy, trouble, and strife in life often produce better writing than happiness and success.

Or maybe it’s just that technology has moved on and you now have some very good writers.

Anyway, many thanks.

Matt Holland Lower Shaw Farm Swindon

Unfair Budget

In the recent Budget statement, the Chancellor tells us that this was a Budget to deliver a fairer and more equitable form of taxation. He says he can offer the means to bring growth, enterprise and a stable economy.

He reduces the taxation for top earners to 45 per cent, decreases Corporation Tax for businesses to 24 per cent (with the promise of a further reduction to 20 per cent) and then in one fell swoop, abolishes pensioners’ income tax allowances in perpetuity. In the coming two years, he plans to reduce the cost of benefits by £10m.

So if you are a top earner, you’ve done very well. If you are a middle income earner or a pensioner, forget it.

The tax loss to a pensioner is £63 per year under these latest developments. Not much, you might think in the grand scheme of things. We are, after all, ‘all in this together’.

Although, hang on. Aren’t Swindon Town FC increasing the cost of a season ticket for concessions for the coming season by £61? Seems like I’ll owe someone two quid!

So what next from this coalition government? Should pensioners who have paid into the state all their working lives hand their savings over to Mr Osborne?

Let’s think outside the box. What about compulsory euthanasia for anyone over the age of 65? Now there’s a thought.

John Beale Wigmore Avenue Swindon

...Right is wrong

History will let us know if it is one of the turning points for the country, or simply someone riding off into the sunset. I refer, of course, to the secondment of the Prime Minister’s guru, Mr Steve Hilton, who most people have never heard of but who has the PM’s ear on policy matters, no matter how influential local MPs think they are.

It is well known that the Conservative Party are frustrated by the slow pace of change in our public services. Their reason for being is that they see, apart from matters like defence, that the private sector should provide all other services and the public sector is actually a barrier to the free market for all other matters.

Unfortunately, apart from the vast majority of the Tory cabinet being richer than Lotto winners, and so, out of touch with everyday matters, they are so ideologically blinded they will use neither common sense nor reasoning based on past experiences.

Barely a day goes by without some reminder of the disastrous policies that are the legacy of Mrs Thatcher’s right-wing government. Miss-selling of insurances and lately energy, let alone the giving away (sorry, privatisation) of our resources, eg water, gas, electricity, phones, which the public are all having to pay greater prices for. Son of Thatcher, Cameron, has taken the process even further, cutting essential services that everyday people rely on.

Steve Hilton has gone to the US to listen and learn from their right-wing, free marketers. On his return, he may be able to convince Cameron et al to adopt these policies, health care by insurance, school vouchers, 10 per cent unemployment rate: he will be aided and abetted by Conservative MPs and local councillors, who are now playing with cutting back on public service.

Bob Pixton Sedgebrook Swindon

...road to hell

Do our politicians learn nothing? Margaret Thatcher sold off the family silver when she sold off the utilities and the railways.

Since that time it has cost the customers/users millions or probably billions making private firms rich. Now George Osborne is launching the idea of selling off yet more of the public assets in the form of roads.

Make no bones about it, this will cost us all a huge amount of money. You and I and other companies for the delivery of goods throughout the country. What company, or who, is going to buy the roads if they can’t charge to use them and thus make a profit? And it will be yet again like the bankers. Vast profits and huge bonuses for doing what?

This is one of George’s sillier ideas! Let’s knock this idea on the head now before it even gets a hearing in Parliament.

It’s morally wrong because they were built with public money and it’s ethically wrong.

Yes I know we need to get out of the deep debts that Labour got us into. There can be no going back to borrow and spend as the Labour party did, and would do again if they got into power – but there has to be a better way of doing things than this.

David Collins Blake Crescent Swindon

Lines Bluh-ed?

I refer to the article published on March 23 in the Adver regarding the council giving £82,000 to Rikki Hunt between 2007 and 2010.

When I read this story on Friday Morning I wondered how Councillor Bluh could have ever been elected to the prominent position of Leader of Swindon Council.

In the article Councillor Bluh makes a number of claims. He claims Mr Hunt was employed solely on his merits. The last I heard bringing Swindon Town Football Club to the brink of bankruptcy as the club’s chairman, losing £400k of council taxpayers’ money on a failed wi-fi scheme and being personally made bankrupt are not exactly high-quality references to justify his £82k salary.

Councillor Bluh then tries to delegate responsibility for this decision to the staff that he runs and says that Rikki Hunt was used as a consultant, so was not on the Council’s payroll (somehow this made it okay?).

Is Councillor Bluh really trying to tell the people of Swindon that he did not know or agree to Mr Hunt being paid in substantial sums by the Council?

Bill Mayer Darwin Close Swindon

School redress

I read with interest the excellent and very eloquent letter written by Issac Chandler and Matthew Ball of Churchfields Academy, in response to an earlier letter I had written where I was critical of the Academy’s decision to sponsor a football match at Swindon Town Football Club.

These students seem to be under the wrong impression that I am objecting to their schools partnership with Swindon Town FC, and nothing could be further from the truth.

While I was, and still am, critical of a school sponsoring a football match, it should be highlighted that praise is also due to the Academy for its excellent work with the football club and setting up the partnership which the students obviously find very beneficial. I also know that the football club is very committed to this partnership and I congratulate them for the part they play.

My point is that this partnership was not, and never would be, dependent on the school sponsoring one of their matches and the money used for this could be put to far better use within the school, in my humble opinion.

Trevor Smith Braemar Close Swindon

Town’s shame

I see the sun has brought the idiots out of the woodwork in the town centre.

Walking through the town on Friday March 23, I saw a cyclist speed his way through the town knocking over a 9-10-year-old boy in the process.

The cyclist only stopped for the merest of seconds to deliver a load of expletives to the poor boy’s mum, who was understandably upset and shouted to him that cycling was banned from the town centre.

Carrying on through the town, I came across loads of people knocking back alcohol, hanging round town and every other word coming out of their foul mouths being a swear word.

Exactly what is meant to tempt people into Swindon town centre?

If I didn’t work in there I would NEVER visit.

It makes me ashamed to live in this town.

D Hutchins Belsay Swindon