Dear Editor, 

A CURIOUS contrast with ‘Council buys hotel for £8m to boost services' (Gazette, September 29) being at the Top of Town, near the red lion, that might just roar! ‘Cinema set to be sold off over £680m debts' (Gazette, September 29) being one of the town's two cinemas being owned not by our caring council, but the council from Slough trying hard to lessen its debts, for, of course, the benefit of that community?

Councils provide services, and for that they require staff, that, of course, costs money, and these days staff have rights, such as maternity leave (even dads), pension rights and when the Government does a shuffle with their employees… gosh, a handy sum of redundancy! Government pensions are guaranteed, those of us that are on schedule D (self-employed) have to look after ourselves and carry on working until we drop! Those employees in the private sector, well, that all depends on the employer. Mighty American PLC companies (that might be a container for any smaller companies) might decide to transfer an ageing business to an equity fund, or "wind up" a weak one. then the power of workers’ rights is diluted or disappears like water in a desert! So, in other words, is all this about the rights of council staff? Those "rights" would disappear in the event of our £, going the same way as the currency of Venezuela, so take note!

‘Local plan delays as cabinet criticised’ (Gazette, September 29), it would seem that our local borough is not standing up to central government's insistence of yet more "homes”. The situation is much the same as above, many former school grounds have been turned into housing, why? To support the "workers’ rights" of all sorts of county council staff?

The monetary value of a business is called good will. Sometimes in human society that gets hard to find. Sometimes we all take too much for granted. The Bible says something like, "we must love one another", but what form? Good will all too soon vanishes, like water in the sands!

Paul FitzPatrick,

Winklebury Way

Basinsgstoke