When I saw your picture of assorted 5G protesters in SNJ (P3 April 12), I was reminded of an amusing tale we were told when we first moved to this delightful town eight years ago.

The story went that back in the 1840s the radical folk of Stroud had apparently refused to synchronise their clocks with the new-fangled ‘train time’ (Greenwich Mean Time) with the result that the area dawdled along over seven minutes behind compatriots in London and the rest of the country.

This situation didn’t last long after the railway hit town because people got fed up with arriving at the station to find they had missed their trains by seven and a half minutes and decided to embrace modernity instead.

Your picture saw history repeating itself with 25 Stroudies and their dogs attempting to hold back progress.

Predictably, 5G arch-enemy Richard House weighed in with a letter (SNJ P24 April 19) calling on local authorities to surcharge council tax payers to pay for “local referenda” on his barmy ideas. He is entitled to as many daft opinions as he likes, but not to make taxpayers foot the bill for them. Perhaps he hasn’t noticed that we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

Mobile phone reception is poor in this town. 5G will greatly improve download speeds, clear channels for emergency services and generally improve the economic environment for everybody. There are no health risks to humans, or bees for that matter, from this technology. It doesn’t give you Covid or brainwash people with messages from Bill Gates.

Why should Stroud residents miss out on the benefits of 5G? I doubt if the vast majority of us want to get stuck behind the times this time around.

John Hayward

Stroud