Letters - May 6, 2016

The NHS is under threat from a Health Secretary and Prime Minister who are manipulating the service to suit their long-term aim, which is to alter the NHS to something more akin to the USA private health care system.

The writer claims to work in the NHS. However, whether he or she is an employee or not is of little consequence. One only needs to look at the unrest within the service under this Tory administration which has resulted in creating many disgruntled staff.

Waiting lists have risen dramatically under this government. Most hospital trusts are under great financial strain. Many are already in the red and cutting services. Should we be surprised? NO. History is repeating itself; Tory Governments have ALWAYS neglected the health service.

Doctors are leaving the service due to the inept handling of the junior doctors’ protest. The NHS is now seeking newly trained young doctors from the Indian continent. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt and the PM need to stop being confrontational and talk and listen to these practitioners and the BMA.

The unsigned letter declaring ex County Coun Lewis’s letter was scaremongering is nonsense. It appears the unknown writer doesn’t like the truth and knows very little of the history of the NHS.

Mr Lewis was correct. The Tories did NOT support the introduction of the NHS by Labour in 1947, they voted against it. They also voted against increased funding provided by the Blair government, which was needed after years of neglect under Thatcher and Major.

Jack Croysdill

Chairman, Blackpool North/Cleveleys Constituency Labour party

HEALTH

Ministers in charge have their agenda

There are Tory MPs who make no secret of their wish to destroy the NHS, and Hunt’s confrontation with the so-called junior doctors is only the next step in that direction.

The increase in the number of in-hospital weekend deaths used to justify this confrontation has been discredited and, without the support of diagnostic departments, weekend doctors will be less effective than midweek colleagues.

The Government is not prepared to fund that support. In 1988 Oliver Letwin and John Redwood, while on attachment to the private bank NM Rothschild, published their proposals for the free market reform of the “untamed NHS”. In the same year, Letwin published his book Privatising the World and, in 2004, claimed the NHS would not exist within five years of a Tory Government.

Letwin is now a minister for government policy with a special interest in healthcare.

On current evidence he will be celebrating sometime within the next four years.

AH Roberts

Address supplied

MANNERS

Spitting is a sign of 
a town on the slide

I agree with Cliff Chambers’ letter on spitting (Your Say, Gazette, April 25). This habit is, in most cases disgusting.

Back in the 50s signs against it were everywhere, on public transport the sign stated a £5 fine, in those days a weeks wages in the mill.

You see it on television with footballers spitting every five minutes. I notice more sliding tackles towards the end of a match, no doubt due to the build-up of spit.

Kevin Gooder

Clinton Avenue

Blackpool

TRANSPORT

Bus cuts will have 
an effect on health

I write to say well done to Rennie Fry for taking the initiative to speak out regarding the bus services in Over Wyre, which no one else (local councillors and LCC representatives included) until now, seems to have taken the slightest interest in (Gazette, April 28).

Rennie is quite right in what she says, as on the Bank Holiday weekend services to Over Wyre from Blackpool will terminate, I assume since Bank Holiday service is normally Sunday service, at 6.50pm from Blackpool, and at 8pm from Knott End on Saturday and that’s it until the following Tuesday.

In a rural area like this, where there are planning consents in place for the construction of around 71 new houses in Hambleton alone, and with an attempt at a public transport service which frankly is a joke, who is going to buy/rent these lovely new homes when they are built?

As Lynn Bowen stated, for some in Over Wyre the bus service is our only mode of transport, meaning lots of us can no longer do what we used to do with our leisure time, ie on a Sunday take a walk along part of the Wyre Way and/or the old Pilling pig track, stop for food at a local pub, and then catch a bus home.

We can go nowhere now unless we walk both ways or take a taxi.

Maybe LCC should be looking at the effects all of this will have on the health and wellbeing of many Over Wyre residents, since their excuse for cutting the bus subsidies was they claimed, in part, because they need to provide more healthy and social care!

Name and address supplied

POLITICS

QEII or President Dave? No contest

Queen Elizabeth or President Cameron / Blair (delete as appropriate)?

No contest.

William Scudamore

Address supplied