Letters - January 4, 2017

It is such a sad indictment of society today when those who make caring for others their career and their life’s work are set upon by the very people they seek to help.

It beggars belief that nursing and medical staff too, are subject to verbal and physical assaults when you consider their roles in society.

I am of a certain generation where police officers were respected, doctors were revered, nurses were loved and cherished and ambulance staff were your knights in shining armour if you were unfortunate in having to make that emergency call.

I wish to place on record my own gratitude, respect and affection for these people gained from my own personal experiences of life. Rest assured, everybody will need the services of these fine professionals at one time in their lives so appreciate the fact that they are there to help you for no other reason than they care.

My children and grandchildren are similarly educated to understand this.

And this is what is desperately needed; education.

It needs parents to stand up and be counted and administer the discipline that so many are too lazy to instil in their children and if necessary, their grandchildren.

Educate them and make them realise that when they are sick or victims of crime, these are the people who they are going to shout very loudly for and who will make the difference.

Don’t let wishy, washy do gooders blame drink, drugs or any other less than valid reason to allow individuals to opt out of blame for these assaults and abuse.

In life, no matter what, we all carry personal responsibility for our actions. It is as simple as that.

Jimmy 
Gilliard

Anchorsholme

COUNCIL TAX

Have we got our priorities wrong?

Once again council tax raises its ugly head only this time with frightening consequences for those on fixed incomes such as pensioners and others who have no entitlements under the benefit systems.

These are people who may live in a valuable property but have no means of increasing their incomes to compensate for the increases.

They may have lived in the same property all their lives and have seen its value rise over the years but their incomes have not increased in proportion.

These council tax increases are being forecast to be anything from 5 per cent to a mind-boggling 16 per cent in some areas and are being imposed to pay to cover councils social care expenditure.

There are approximately 22 million taxable properties in England generating about £24bn in revenues.

According to government publications the increases to cover social care will generate between £208m and £356m which is a piddling sum compared to the many billions of pounds paid in overseas aid to corrupt regimes who are known to misappropriate aid monies.

This is downright scandalous especially when the Government knows all about the corruption, yet sting our own tax payers into paying for our own social care. Someone has got their priorities wrong!!

Derek 
J Bunting

Birkdale Avenue

Blackpool

TAX RISE

Level of overseas aid is national disgrace

Why is our Government wanting to encourage our Local Authorities to raise taxes to pay for woefully lacking Social NHS Care in our country whilst still giving obscenely large amounts of tax payers’ money to dubious and frequently corrupt politicians and Governments in Third World Countries? Little is declared as to how the sum of 0.79 per cent of our GDP should be allotted to this very purpose, came about, but when it becomes apparent that a comparative small percentage of this total amount could pay for this declared Social NHS shortfall

in the care of our own citizens, it becomes a national disgrace and this unfairness in raising this capital by imposing taxes should be opposed most vehemently.

No one is suggesting that overseas aid should not be continued.

However saddling our own population with extra taxes to pay for this glaring NHS shortfall is not the sensible way any democratic country should be expected to behave.

E J Tilley

Via email

SUGAR TAX

Three lumps claim 
is scaremongering

The recent launch of a new ‘app’ by Public Health England (PHE) to enable consumers to scan supermarket product barcodes for the sugar content is a reasonable move. We believe that awareness of sugar content is a good thing.

However, the claim from PHE that children are consuming three cubes of sugar from breakfast and fruit juice before they get to school is ridiculous.

One cube of sugar has about 12 calories, so three cubes of sugar, comprising 36 calories in total, is absolutely not going to make children more obese. Let’s stop the scaremongering over sugar.

Brook 
Whelan

Chief executive

People against Sugar Tax