WE’RE so sorry to hear that Karen Eberhardt-Shelton is leaving Stroud and therefore giving up her column, as we will no longer have a reason to fume with righteous indignation and shout at the newspaper.

Although we largely agree with her views on the environment, recycling, the importance of the natural world etc, we have never heard them spouted in such a self-righteous manner.

Her final column (December 16, 2015 issue) is a real pièce de resistance.

Firstly, she uses her column in the SNJ to sling mud at those of us in Stroud who do think along the same lines as her.

I quote: “too much talk, too many meetings, presentations, projects...resulting in what?”.

How dare she?

Those of us involved in voluntary projects such as the ground-breaking and nationally and internationally copied Stroudco Foodhub and Stroud Community Agriculture, not to mention Transition Stroud are, we are sure, justly offended by such comments.

She then continues to extol the many virtues of her new rural home in Wales by talking about how lovely it is to have sheep at the bottom of her garden.

She is largely ignoring the fact that sheep are one of the major causes of the destruction of land and deforestation in upland areas, which in turn can result in flooding in lowland areas (although she does at least question the need to have them in such numbers).

But the final thing which really got us going was this sentence: “I’ve already had my first speeding ticket here! – 35mph in a 30mph zone – with £100 fine! Cheeky devils.”

Perhaps she hasn’t seen the advice from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA) which states that “the risk of a pedestrian who is hit by a car being killed increases slowly until impact speeds of around 30mph.

Above this speed, the risk increases rapidly, so that a pedestrian who is hit by a car travelling at between 30mph and 40mph is between 3.5 and 5.5 times more likely to be killed than if hit by a car travelling at speeds of 30mph or below.”

And does she not realise that travelling at higher speeds in her car releases more carbon dioxide and monoxide into the atmosphere and greatly contributes to the climate change she believes herself to be against?

Denise Robotham and Liz Terry
Ebley