Further to Judy Barber’s excellent letter on the Cashes Green 5G mast application (SNJ, April 12), it’s also important to be aware that the government has now rigged the local planning system, such that 5G infrastructure can only be objected to on aesthetic grounds alone.

This is an incredible state of affairs, where government is in collusion with Big Tech to impose this unneeded and possibly harmful technology on the hapless populace. Moreover, the legal system is also doing all it can to scupper the judicial review that has been led against the 5G roll-out, led by the brilliant QC, Michael Mansfield.

What we urgently need are local, fully informed referenda on whether local people really want this technology or not. With a full and open public debate on the merits or otherwise of 5G, that would be real democracy – not the unaccountable “corporatrocracy” that we have at the moment.

I call on local councils to organise local referenda on 5G – let’s see how truly democratic you really are! And I’d be more than happy to pay a few extra pence on my Council Tax to fund them.

Richard House

Stroud 5G group