Dear Editor,

We would like to thank the people of Wellington and the surrounding area for their generosity.

Firstly, for providing a huge number of good quality books for us to display in the Pop-up Shop, and secondly, for their donations when they helped rehome the books. We raised a total of almost £3,000 and look forward to seeing you all again in October for our next Pop-Up Book Shop.

In the meantime, we will be busy collecting and sorting.

Ada Mournian

Club secretary, Wellington Monument Rotary

Dear Editor,

Still cannot believe this is going ahead. Still cannot believe why they have not spoken to the emergency services for their concerns.

We live in Barnmeads Road, Wellington. On April 25 and again on May 2, I was unfortunate enough to need a emergency blue light ambulance.

The first came at midnight but had to come from Bridgewater. Took 25 mins. They were brilliant. Straight up M5 to junction 26.

Unfortunately I then needed another a week or so later. This crew had to come from Crewkerne we believe. They had to come down M5 off at junction 26 because their sat nav wouldn't allow them to use narrow roads.

Both of these vehicles would be 20 to 30 minutes more in traffic. People could possibly lose their lives! This is madness.

Dennis Hobbs

Barnmeads Road, Wellington

Dear Editor,

It's great news that funding has been secured for Wellington station and I was pleased to read Gideon Amos' piece last week crediting his MP predecessors who championed the cause.

Hansard records that Jeremy Browne, our MP from 2005 to 2015, not only made the case in Westminster for a new station but also the case for completion of Wellington's northern relief road. In the Westminster Hall debate of March 2014 Mr Browne says of Lillebonne Way, "it is a dead end - it is a road to nowhere" and the complex of roads serving the Longforth Farm estate he refers to as an "extended cul-de-sac".

Shockingly, over the intervening eleven years since Jeremy Browne raised the issue in parliament zero progress has been made. Meanwhile the 500 homes on Longforth Farm are now built and a further 350 north of the railway line, off Wardleworth Way, are in the pipeline with even more housing earmarked for the farmland to the east. North Street (B3187) is having to carry more and more traffic and is breaking up badly, especially through the Waterloo Road/Station Road stretch and pedestrians are increasingly finding themselves pushed off the pavements by vehicles mounting the kerb in order that oncoming traffic can pass.

Our MP, Gideon Amos is an architect and urban designer. I earnestly hope that his expertise in this field can be put to use in resolving the longstanding issue of Wellington's ill-fated northern relief road. A breakthrough needs to be forced - a determined effort - a bit like the station project.

Tim Lomas

Owen Street, Wellington

It is no surprise after last week’s photograph opportunity that the former Tory MP should write a column in the Postbag for this week’s Wellington Weekly News (July 20), extolling all she did to progress the opening of the Wellington railway station.

What Rebecca Pow should remember is that it was Jeremy Browne the Liberal Democrat MP who first launched the campaign for a railway station in Wellington. This has rightly been corrected across other pages of this newspaper. I think we can look to her successor the new Liberal Democrat Gideon Amos MP to get this project back on track.

As the Tories record shows, since 2020 there were four new Prime Ministers, five Chancellors of the Exchequer and six Secretaries of State for Transport. So Ms Pow doesn’t have much to take credit for, as to why the project for the new railway station never got further than the planning stage. All she has done is to signal the complete incompetence and chaos her Tory government left the country in, with its inability to add up the sums to make ends meet. Less of politicians ego tripping and in fighting would have made them more commendable to the electorate.

Just look at their mess over HS2, for which the leader of the opposition is still unable to accept any of the former government’s responsibility, let alone apologise, for their fourteen years in office, to leave the UK in such a poor economic state. Having said that, the new Labour government has made mistakes which have done them no favours. It will take several years for the green light of growth to be seen to fly the flag as to why changes were needed a year ago. We wish our MP continues working for his constituents in Taunton and Wellington.

Isabel Ward

via email