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The letters page of my local newspaper the Shropshire Star has developed into a reasonable significant online community platform for debate on matters related to our government global warming and the EU.

The original letters slowly drop down the list over a period of a week or two as new letters are added, so eventually any debate falls of the bottom of the page, the Star also limits to comments to around 25 at which point the section is closed.

I noticed a few weeks ago that the Start printed a letter from someone from a local UKIP office, but the letter was printed without a comments section, thus making it impossible for anyone to offer an alternative view. As it happens the letter was reasonably non confrontational anyway, but it struck me that by denying the opportunity to debate with UKIP the Star was leaving itself open to charges of bias.

This week the Star did it again with a letter from R Knight, Telford & Wrekin UKIP

I do not remember any other letter being posted from any other source without the attached comment form, so this Corbett like policy seems to be reserved solely for UKIP.

UKIP would not be scared of comments nor are they incapable of defending their position, so I wrote to the Star editor to ask for an explanation of their policy. I also sent a copy to the Electronic Editor who replied with a standard letter telling me they do not enter into correspondence over their comments section! fair enough, I can see the reason for that, but it did not get me very far.

I also receive a letter from the editor, who was a little more forthcoming although she got the wrong end of the stick and thought I was complaining about the Star printing the letter from UKIP in the first place, and replied accordingly, thus entirely missing my point.

Apparently there is no policy in place and the only limits are those of space and legal considerations.

I have written again but given the policy of not entering into correspondence over the comment section I do not expect to progress this further.

I was however very interested to learn that;

the overwhelming majority of “political” letters happen to be from UKIP supporters, very few opposing the Party, or in fact those in favour of membership of the EU, are received.

Many of those which are submitted are, for some reason, usually highly libelous and too personal in content to print.

From this information I conclude that either UKIP is bombarding the letters page, or the local community are strongly anti – EU. I would have thought if it were the first, then there would still be a reasonable amount of Pro-EU letters dropping through the Stars inbox, but there are very few letters expressing opposition to UKIP or supportive of the EU. So I will take heart that my local community is anti EU whether that transfers into UKIP votes is entirely another matter.

Edit: just to prove me wrong the Star has just published one other letter without comments?

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Shropshire Star, UKIP, anti –EU, political letters
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