Readers' letters - January 19

Re: NHS bed shortage.

I’m an ex-nurse from the 60s, 70s and 80s and the obvious answer to this horrendous situation is to open up continuation hospitals.

And for the elderly, who are blocking beds in the general hospitals, the answer is to re-open geriatric hospitals, so they can be nursed until they are able to go home.

When I worked at Preston Royal Infirmary and Sharoe Green Hospital, I remember taking patients to sitting ambulances to be transferred to a local continuation hospital until they were well enough to go home.

Some were post-operation patients.

Someone in their wisdom decided that these places were no longer needed.

Absolute madness and rubbish, and now we are all suffering from their incompetence.

I remember visiting at least two of my elderly relatives at the local geriatric hospital where they were nursed until ready and able to return home, or one of them went into a rest

home.

I am so very angry.

How can the people, councils and government

not see what these decisions have done to us?

Janette Ellwood

via email

transport

Bypass is pointless

Re: The NW Distributor Road and new M55 junction et al.

I was, as many others who have been engineers, not one bit surprised that this scheme is already massively over budget, even before a sod is dug.

The Fylde is a minefield of mixed glacial deposits, surely the tribulations when building the M55 should have told LCC and PCC that in advance.

Notwithstanding this huge cost, very few people outside the councils have any idea why the road is even being built.

At best, it’s a back door into the new housing, but even then, if that traffic is heading east, it’s still going to be caught up in the Broughton bottleneck.

Surely the money should be spent on upgrading the main M6/M55 interchange, which is the real problem.

Full marks to the LP for last week’s articles on traffic and transport, yet again highlighting the fact that the Penwortham Bypass is pointless since again here the problem is not Penwortham but the city centre, from the direction of the Ribble bridges.

There’s no point banging on about an integrated transport solution since it appears no one at county or city councils has a clue what it means. Sadly Preston will continue to be poorly served by its transport system for many decades to come. Yours very frustrated,

Roger Morgan (Land surveyor, retired)

via email

health

May ‘running down the NHS’

In January 2000, the then Conservative leader, William Hague, pointed out in the House of Commons that NHS operations were being cancelled in order to cope with winter flu.

He then went on offer his own solution and said, “I believe the time has come for a careful consideration of how the private sector and government help for people taking private health insurance can ease some of the pressures on the NHS.”

If I was a Tory, I would think what a spiffing wheeze it would be if I could assist my fat cat friends in getting their claws into the NHS by actually making sure that debilitating pressure on the NHS was increased by starving it of funds.

This is what has been happening and every winter sees another inevitable crisis. If I did not find her so odious, I could almost admire the sheer brass neck of Mrs May when she brazenly accuses Jeremy Corbyn of “talking down” the NHS when it is she who is a prime mover in running it down.

John Prance

Penwortham

hollywood

Golden globes reflect the truth

The Golden Globes celebrate the best fiction in movies and on TV, although this time we see more about the reality of the acting industry with the revelation and condemnation of inappropriate behaviours.

Inappropriate is a broad term but unfortunately we have learned of so many different crimes –yes crimes – that we need to make sure the net is spread as widely as possible.

We all need to listen to the words of Oprah Winfrey and act so there is never a need to say these things again.

The calendar has moved into the 21st century nearly two decades ago, it’s time the industry caught up.

Dennis Fitzgerald

via email