The shop at the end of the road...

Dear Store Manager,
Since opening last year the local Tesco Express store, for which you work, has had a significant impact on the local community. As I am sure you are aware the store has been a hit amongst the local community, one which has a base of around 80% students. The success of the store seems to have been great and I offer my congratulations for this.
In terms of measurable success I point to two major achievements that you have managed:
1. The local convenience store on Park Road shut down late last year and has remained so. The store owner and manager lost 4/5 of his customers once Tesco had opened. He tried to remain open as he had recently purchased a new house for his family to live in but, alas, he was forced to shut down after not receiving enough custom to purchase new stock. A family run business, open for well over a decade was swiftly put out of business.
2. The second achievement that I trust you shall report to your superiors is the recent closure of the fantastic mini mart in Church square, a community centre for Lenton. Tesco’s branding, undercutting, false promise of quality and lack of respect for local communities has managed to force the closure of a second family business. Thank you for providing the residents of Lenton with the choice of 2 overpriced, corporate shopping facilities that have the audacity to use machines instead of cashiers, thus not needing to employ local people.
Please consider your position and the position of the company for which you are employed. Two family businesses closed, local shopping destroyed, bin loads of wasted food and a population fed on over packaged, over priced food that, at the same time, pushes farmers into poverty- that is a record for which to be proud.
Shut the store down. Allow families to have there lives back. Get out of Lenton.
Oh and thanks for the five hundred pounds for a local charity. A huge blow to your finances I’m sure.
Yours sincerely
Matthew Butcher ( a local resident)

Nick Griffin

Dear Mr Griffin,

June has been quite some month for you. I would like to congratulate you on your election gains in the European Elections, but I just can’t. The problem that I find staring me in the face when I think about your recent electoral success is that I simply cannot understand how you managed to convince nearly 10% of a reasonably well-educated population that you weren’t simply a group of thuggish, intellectually stunted, racist, power hungry demagogues who are intent on thriving on the insecurities of a nation suffering from economic and political collapse.

I have been told that it’s not even worth giving people like you the time of day, that you are beyond reason and sick in the mind, but I don’t believe that. I wonder if somewhere inside you there is a flicker of guilt about what you are doing, if you ever question whether feeding off anger and turning it into hatred is a less-than-moral way of going about things. I want you to explain to me why you wouldn’t want your daughter to marry a black man, or fall in love with a woman? I ask you to explain to me how you put the importance of a ‘British Nation, one which you are intent on constructing in people’s minds as one without dark faces or homosexuals, above the very basic rights of people to make a home in a country which they choose to live, work and fall in love in.

Mr Griffin , you are one of a small and privileged group to receive a world class education at Cambridge University. You are clearly an intelligent man, with aspirations to match. How can a man with such an education even begin to spout the utterly ridiculous holocaust denying claptrap that you have made public? To deny historical fact and dismiss the mass murder of millions of Jewish people as the killing of ‘a few thousand communists’ and then to attempt to gain the Jewish vote by pronouncing the ‘Islamification of Britain’ beggars belief. Only a man desperate to grasp upon the fear and desperation of an impoverished, unemployed and often ignorant populations would dare to open himself up to ridicule by making public declarations that defy both fact and logic in an attempt to win votes.

After reading the policies of your party I feel like I could write a book deconstructing and criticizing them for their complete detachment from any sort of reality, but I won’t bore you with such an endeavour. I can only ask that you end your charade and reveal yourself and your party for who you are. The British population has voted in bad governments before and will do so again but they will never fall fowl of the lying, foul, racist party rooted in hatred that you are currently the leader of.
Enjoy your brief relationship with power, it will not last.

Your sincerely

Matthew Butcher

Elizabeth

Your Majesty,
I hope that I can be frank with you in this letter Your Majesty. I want to be polite to you, I am a polite person afterall, but I am afraid that I may have to step away from the usual protocol for letters that you receive. I hope that it is ok that from now on I shall address Your Majesty as Elizabeth and when I am talking about Your Majesty I may hazard to just say ‘you’. I have read the step by step guide to writing a letter to my head of state and I am afraid that it has left me in an awful muddle and feeling rather like I am addressing my letter to the position and not the person who is the Queen of my country.

I shall be honest Elizabeth; I am a republican. Not in the way that George W. Bush is a republican, but in that I don’t believe in unelected leadership. I can’t shake the feeling that the time for kings and queens and princes and palaces has passed. I am also a democrat, again not in the way that a person in the United States might be, but I believe in democracy, in government for the people by the people. Call me old fashioned but it just seems the best of what there is to offer at the moment. So you know a bit about me now, I’m a republican and a democrat and I’m not very good at following protocol, and you’re probably thinking ‘oh dear me he can’t be British’ but I am afraid I am indeed.
I saw you once. You walked passed my school in the year of the Golden Jubilee, I thought it was your wedding anniversary but apparently not. The school bought in massive tubs of flowers to line the corridors with, they departed just after you did. Your life must be quite a floral one, do you have a favourite variety? My great aunt didn’t like red and white flowers together because they reminded her of death, do you have any combinations that you don’t like? I’ve taken rather fondly to those yellow fields of oil seed rape that I have the pleasure to admire on long train journeys, but I don’t imagine that anyone ties them up in bunches and hands them to you when you’re visiting their town. I think that’s what I’d give you.

Every so often I think about you Elizabeth and, again excuse me for my frankness, I feel sorry for you. You, like so many millions who suffer in this world, are the result of the ‘accident of birth’. While many strive for a world where one’s place of birth and who their parents are doesn’t dictate their existence I wonder how many think about Elizabeth II. If I wanted to go for a walk tomorrow, in my bare feet, I could do so. If I wanted to on a bike ride with my girlfriend and hold hands while we rode, I could do so. If I wanted to give up my job, stop my education, sleep all day and dance all night, I could do so. I wonder if you’ve ever stayed up all night and all day just to see what its like. I wonder if you’ve had your heart broken, or broken someone elses heart?

It must be a hard job sometimes. Aside from all of the visiting, handshaking and smiling that you’re subjected to on a daily basis you also have the overall control of a population of over 120 Million people. You’re the head of a church, the head of 16 states, the head of a commonwealth and yet you are asked not to give direction but to stand and nod, even when you hate the things that you are nodding to. It is considered unconstitutional for you to vote in any elections, you can’t even have a say in who it is that you must stand in front of every year and read out a timetable of government for. I couldn’t do your job Elizabeth, there is just too much bad governance for me to be quiet about it, but you have to, even when you hate it.

I am writing to you with a request Elizabeth. I want you to resign. I want you to be the last person in this country who is denied the right to vote, I want you to be the last person who has to nod and smile at laws that they don’t agree with. If you wanted to, until you get a place sorted, you can sleep on my bed and I’ll sleep on the sofa, I know it’s no Buckingham palace but you could wake up in the morning and go for a coffee with Phillip, or a friend and not have to worry about your hat sitting at the right angle or your grandchildren dressing up as Nazis, because you’d be just like everyone else and we’re not all followed around by the press and asked to smile for photos, I assure you of that.

If you want to, just to stir things up a bit, you could sack the Prime Minister and get rid of the House of Lords before you go, then you’d have lots of accommodation offered to you I am sure.

I do hope you consider my request.

Your Majesty’s Humble and Obedient Subject (I did this bit right)


Matthew Butcher

Boots and their Plastic Bags

Dear Boots Manager,
As I am sure that you are aware the Students’ Union is a representative organisation for the 35000 or so students studying at Nottingham University. Each student is represented at Student Union Council and it was at this council that it was mandated that I lobby for an introduction of a charge for plastic bags at Boots in the Portland Building.
Although I understand that not charging for plastic bags may be seen as a competitive advantage over the Student Union shop I ask you to be aware of the increased expectance from Students that they will be charge for plastic bags. I urge you to follow the lead of the shop directly opposite you and charge at least 5p per plastic bag, while looking to increase to 10p in agreement with the SU shop. The SU shop has seen a 66% decrease in plastic bag use while raising over £1000 from plastic bag sales since introducing the charge.
Our Students have high ethical and environmental standards and I urge you to avoid half measures and introduce a charge for plastic bags with immediate effect. I look forward to you response.

Yours faithfully

Matthew Butcher
Environment and Social Justice Officer
Nottingham Students Union

The gate at the end of the road

To whom it may concern,
After receiving your letter dated 22nd May I find it necessary to express to you my deepest concern with the actions that have been decided upon (RE: The closure of the Park Road/Lenton Road footpath). Firstly I would like to make it known that I have opposed this measure from the very start and made it clear in conversation with a policeman a few months ago who was interviewing those who use the gate.
Access to the Park, though I understand can be limited under the 1990 Act, has become an accepted and appreciated through route from Lenton to the City Centre. I use the route often, at all times of day and night, and never cause disturbance to the local residence. Though I understand that there have been a number of incidents that have caused concern to the residents on The Park I also question whether or not you have had any consideration for those who live outside The Park whose houses will now be passed by the very same people you are legislating against. Rather than offering any solution to the problem at hand you have simply fobbed it off to those who don’t have the privilege of gates at the end of their road keeping out citizens of our city who they see as a nuisance. Has any consideration to women walking home alone, who now have to take a longer route, been taken into account? I have a number of female friends that use the park as a quick route home from Town on a night out.
It strikes me that the plans have been devised by those who have the money and power to exclude Nottingham Citizens from their own city. The people who I would imagine will be affected by this will be a) Students b) Lower Income Families and c) other young people. It should be considered that there are root causes behind antisocial behavior that need to be addressed and short-term, illiberal and exclusionary tactics are not likely to be successful.
I hope that you reconsider the proposal to lock the gate

Yours faithfully


Matthew Butcher