Letters: Lymington's Sir Harry Burrard Neale is no hero to me

SIR – About one year ago the people of Lymington and Pennington were told by our town council that no public money would be spent on the refurbishment of the Burrard Neale memorial monument.

Up to now approximately £40,000 has been injected by the council towards a total cost in excess of £180,000. Funds raised by the Lymington Society and involving the Lottery fund have raised the rest.

Admiral Sir Harry Burrard Neale is famed for brutally putting down a mutiny in the Thames estuary, fighting the French and participating in the slave trade, as an owner in the West Indies.

Much as I appreciate we should all remember our historical heroes, he is not one of them. I firmly believe this money ought to have been spent on something more worthy, perhaps shelter for the desperate souls who sleep in our streets.

Possibly this £180,000 could be put with the £900,000 being given to the Lymington Community Centre by the town council for yet another refurbishment, then perhaps we could afford a warm room and a meal for the needy.

To our councillors I send greetings as they stare with glee, fixatedly, from their double glazed windows toward a stone obelisk that no one else is aware of.

Ted Jearrad,

Seaton Close,

Lymington