Readers' letters - May 30

I don’t think there has ever been – or ever will be – an occasion when I wish there was a politician available to help me. I’ve needed paramedics and all sorts of doctors to help me and treat me for heart attacks, my wife, too, and my then 20-month-old son ... and loads of other less-dramatic stuff.

There will have been a handful, ever, of ‘politicians’, for whose lives and particular decisions we are all (or mostly) grateful.

However, names like Nye Bevin, Winston Churchill and William Wilberforce are those of public servants leading great initiatives in times of national need. They needed political office, somehow, to make their specific contributions to society.

Career party-politicians moving around the country to try to get elected are – in the minds of most ordinary folks – of significantly less use to society than doctors, nurses, etc .... probably less than the faithful folks who empty our bins and clean our streets for low wages but half-decent pensions.

If I wanted to know how to run our much-prized NHS to the best effectiveness of service delivery and cost, I would never imagine asking any politician.

In fact, I cannot think of any question in life which I’d ask a modern ‘politician’ over a doctor.

Eden Thomas Whittaker, Warton

Our NHS needs proper funding

The recent revelations concerning the dire multi-billion pound indebtedness of our NHS leaves us in a state of disbelief that this has been allowed to go on for so long. Life expectancy is lengthening and the aged are suffering more complicated life-threatening diseases requiring more expensive drug treatments.

Pressures are increasing on A&E departments, as people cannot get advice or treatment from their medical practice because of being given too far distant appointment times. NHS hospitals are lacking sufficient numbers of doctors and nurses and those we do have are generally from other countries attracted by better pay and conditions offered here than their own.

Our own British-trained doctors seem to prefer the relative freedoms and greater opportunities, free from restrictive NHS regulations, and better conditions of pay offered in former commonwealth countries.

We are amazed to learn that our NHS is regularly demonstrated to be under-funded when compared with the costs of other western nation’s health care.

Over the years, our NHS has had to be regularly given ever larger additional sums in order to survive.

Obviously times have changed since the original NHS inauguration in 1947, but the anticipated funding level has not kept pace with events.

The prized provision of a general NHS is still held in high esteem among the UK population, but it must be properly funded.

It appears sensible that a tax is levied for a realistic hypothecated sum of money to be solely allotted to the NHS (freeing it from the Treasury), to cover the actual costs of health, which seem to be constantly under pressure now.

E J Tilley, Chorley

Safe harbour for Britannia

Modern federal Germany is a democratic state, with a balanced power structure that sees power decentralised to the various constituent regions. Ignorance of the political culture of other European nations is endemic to the anti-EU brigade.

It’s the same old story, firstly the EU is an anti-democratic plot to abolish the historic nation states of Europe and rule everyone centrally from Brussels, next it’s a Franco-German plot to create a Paris-Berlin axis to dominate Europe for their own benefit.

It’s actually an unique project sharing sovereignty for the common good. It isn’t perfect and it is expensive, but it is a safe harbour for the good ship Britannia.

James Bovington via email

Referendum is for us, not MPs

The chances are that you are not a millionaire, an MP or even a VIP and, like me, you are totally frustrated that your thoughts on school places, the NHS, housing and so on, caused by too much immigration, are never heard.

If you did speak out and say what you really thought, would people accuse you of being a little Englander, racist or worse?

How can you believe any of the mind-boggling disasters claimed by the EU sympathisers if we leave the EU (not based on any factual evidence of course, because there isn’t any) and yet, you may ask yourself if there is any truth in their propaganda?

This is natural and just what the EU supporters want you to think.

Be assured without factual evidence, it is just speculation!

How do we, the ‘ real’ supporters of Britain, get our own back on this very one-sided Cameron/Brussels fight for supremacy over our lives and our money?

If you feel as strongly as I do that we, not the EU, should rule our country then, on June 23, we must all take the trouble to go and vote to leave the European Union.

You do not have to tell anybody how you voted.

Remember this was supposed to be a referendum for us, not the politicians – Let’s show ‘em !

Harvey Carter,

Newton

All the same as astrology charts

In the past, in the columns of this newspaper, I have often queried the opinions of so-called professionals in their field of expertise, particularly economic experts.

The ongoing debate between the opposing bodies concerning the referendum appear now

to validate my previous criticisms.

Both sides are constantly dismissing, often in vitriolic language, the claims of individuals and organisations, previously regarded as exemplars of unbiased professional probity.

That is, before the referendum revealed just how much they (politicians) really took notice of their opinions, or, more importantly, only when it suited them to do so.

I would bracket all of them in the same category as astrology charts.

Denis Lee,

Ashton