The above letter appeared in the Sunday Telegraph on August 17th
For context it refers to a fishing activity at the official residence of the Foreign Secretary (David Lammy) in Kent, where he was joined by US VP JD Vance. Lammy did not have a licence, but subsequently apologised and applied for one. The Foreign Secretary has now been given a warning by the Environment Agency. Telegraph letters writers (not from Tunbridge Wells) have complained that they were fined for a first offence. However The Times reports that in 2024/5 765 people were prosecuted and 1, 965 given a warning.
Either way David Lammy should have known better. Izaac Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1693) starts with fishing at the River Lea in Tottenham(his, and my, Constituency)
This was and is a classic August silly season story. There are much more serious reasons for criticising David Lammy.
However letters from Tunbridge Wells have a certain place in letter writing history. They are reputed to be written by people who are ‘disgusted’ and often in green ink (used by actuaries, noted for attention to finer details). To be fair the letter here makes an entertaining point. Perhaps the letters writers of Tunbridge Wells are in a recovery phase.
Indeed a correspondent on BlueSky points out that there have been two letters from Tunbridge Wells in the Guardian recently, one on how to store copies of Guardian Feast and the other controversially questioning Jeremy Corbyn’s potato husbandry. Progress in history…
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