Letters - July 10, 2018

The intolerant attitude of Gazette letter writers Mike Mogilnicki (Your Say, July 4)and Brian Coope (June 29) towards anti-fracking protesters probably matches Cuadrilla’s apparent contempt for most citizens of Lancashire who just don’t want the shale gas industry messing up their countryside.

I travel down Preston New Road most days and I don’t experience any more disruption from these peaceful demonstrators than the road and sewer works which have been taking place there this year.

Recently, a few contra flows have been in place and the police operate these in a fair way which allows protesters their right to demonstrate safely while keeping the road always open. Remember, reports of emergency vehicles being delayed turned out to be fake news last year.

Perhaps Mr Mogilnicki doesn’t understand. Thankfully, UK citizens have the right to peacefully complain just as he has the right to write letters to a free press.

It might be an idea that we three should be asking why the police have had to spend £7.3m just to facilitate Cuadrilla’s insistence to inflict themselves on us all.

If they shoved off, police and protesters would go.

After all they have created few jobs and their direct investment of £7.58m just about matches the police bill to us ratepayers. Their small ‘community fund’ seems like a plea for acceptance even though their only friends are Whitehall officials and a very few local contractors.

Frank Martin

Normoss

HEALTH

We must celebrate 
- and fight for NHS

Our National Health Service turned 70 last Thursday and it was great to see so many people celebrating and saying ‘Thank You’ to NHS staff past and present.

Like so many, I’m proud that we have universal, free-to-use healthcare in Britain. Unfortunately, so many across the world don’t have that luxury.

From the start of our lives, to the very end, our NHS is there for us. We must celebrate on its 70th birthday but we also need to fight to keep it free at the point of use.

As Nye Bevan said: “The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with faith to fight for it”.

Chris Webb

Anchorsholme

APPEAL

Does anyone know about Veronica?

I’m looking for a lady named Veronica Lesley Wright.

On the May 17, 1972 she gave birth to a baby boy named Wayne Stephen Wright in Blackpool, but he was put up for adoption at a very early age and his name changed to Steven John Alexander.

The only information I could find on her was that she married in 1974 in Blackpool to a Kenneth Wilde, which would now make her Veronica Lesley Wilde, and she worked in the sugar confectionery industry.

My email address is [email protected].

Many thanks.

Miss L Davies

Via email

SOCIETY

People managed on much less

Many thousands of words have been written about poverty throughout the world but in this once great country of ours we don’t call it poverty – we call it mismanagement of funds.

How can anyone really say we are poor when people spend many thousands on holidays, have cars, spend many hundreds of pounds on the latest mobile phones and eat in very good restaurants?

Yet some people say they cannot afford to give their children breakfast. Rubbish. Six eggs £1, bag of porridge £1, two pints of milk £1. Hang your head in shame. I don’t like looking back, wages £3 per week, no family allowance, six children to feed, yet people managed.

J Taylor

Via email

HOUSING

‘Dead badgers’ is 
a better name...

Has anyone noticed how developers name their new estates after what they have just destroyed?

Presumably this is a cynical attempt to sell their purchasers a piece of imagined rural idyll.

Please could they be a bit more honest - Three Dead Badgers, No More Skylarks or Goodbye Lapwings would be much nearer the mark than the Meadows, Fields and Pastures that some are being offered.

Jane Adams

Address supplied