Unprecedented to ask for more money

Well of course councillor Mike Brindle is going to support his fellow Labour colleague Terry Jermy, who is the present mayor of Thetford. He has no other option!

It was unprecedented for a mayor to go back to council barely six months into his mayoral term to ask for more money. Councillor Taylor was quite correct in his comment.

All the previous mayors that I have known - and quite a few come to mind - have all, without question, paid any deficit from their own private funds but obviously that is not general knowledge. Neither have any of them slacked in their role, attending as many functions as is physically possible to promote Thetford.

I have no doubt that Terry Jermy equally works as hard as his predecessors but maybe in his excitement to become mayor, he did not realise that extra costs could be incurred and therefore have to be paid back into the account via their own means.

JANE BISHOP

District councillor (Priory ward), Abbey Green, Thetford

Pride in mayor role

Any former Thetford mayor reading Mike Brindle’s letter of January 25 might feel at the least a sense of failure, or at worst insulted if during their term of office they managed to keep within their budget allocation.

Mr Brindle seems to be implying that it is inevitable that the budget would be exceeded if you are a good “out there” mayor, therefore suggesting that previous incumbents have underperformed simply because they had a responsible attitude.

The former mayors that I know fulfilled their period in office with an overwhelming sense of pride and duty and certainly undertook a huge amount of engagements during their mayoral term.

R ROPER

Bury Road, Thetford

These rules would have hit Trump

Regarding President Trump - in a country that boasts it is the “Land of the Free” I really think that in a few months this claim will be invalid under the Trades Description rules. With all honesty, 99pc of the inhabitants are from immigrants at some time in the past, including the new president. I cannot help but think what would happen if the president and US government of the time, when his family reached the shores of the USA, also bought these ideas into existence. Possibly Mr T would not even be here to expound his damaging ideas. With these new rulings he is making for anyone to enter “his country”, I feel that all the other countries of the world should start making rules for anyone from America visiting their countries. He looks down his nose at everyone else, perhaps we should return the compliment.

BRIAN V FOX

Bull Yard, Watton