Letters to the Fenland Citizen editor – February 3, 2021
Our awful roads need urgent attention
What is happening to the roads in Wisbech? Pressure must be put on Cambridgeshire Highways Department to step up and get the roads in Wisbech fit to drive on.
So many of our roads are now in an appalling and dangerous condition.
Potholes everywhere, which are spray painted yellow and then left for weeks on end to get ever bigger and more dangerous.
Even when they do repair a pothole, it is such a dismal effort, that on average it lasts a couple of weeks before it reappears again. People are having their cars, tyres and wheels damaged, leading to expensive repair bills through Cambridgeshire Highways Department’s failure to keep the roads in a roadworthy condition.
When damage is sustained, even if claims with appropriate documentation/photographic evidence are presented to Cambridgeshire Council, they do their utmost to avoid any compensation payments.
Not good enough. These dangerous pot holes and cambers need attention as a matter of urgency.
Faith Cook
Parson Drove
It’s not the outlets, it’s their customers
During a pandemic and lockdown, a journey from March to Wisbech seems wholly unnecessary for fast food, which leads me onto the main point of my letter that is the discarded rubbish from such establishments. Even the council is aware it’s not the stores themselves (see council sign below) but is aware it’s the type of customers they attract. No one of my generation, in conversation, finds the need to travel a distance to buy high fat/salted food.
It’s not just Elm that has excess fast food containers/wrappers wilfully discarded by the roadside, it seems to be everywhere plus cans of various beverages hurled out of cars.
Perhaps there should be a local “rubbish” tax imposed on such establishments as the council is already aware of the cause.
Or even more controversially the younger members of society were taught how to cook more nutritious and healthy food in the first place, though this seems a dying art.
Food for thought.
Donald Hardcastle
Upwell
Why expose your mother anyway?
With reference to Andy Dodds' letter “ Store’s stance on COVID is morally disgusting”, I had to re -read this to make sure that I understood the point he was trying to make.
In this current situation, a global pandemic, lock down and 100,000 deaths, I am surprised that he would want to take his mother into a public space, a lady “whom is in constant pain all the time and is barely able to stand for short periods nowadays” and expose her to the possibility of catching COVID. Is that morally disgusting?
In the past I have done my own mother’s shopping but now due to lockdown have arranged a home delivery which I do online for her (with Tesco). I have found the staff at Tesco very helpful during this last year.
Nancy Scott-Thompson
Emneth
Why help the NHS when it wastes so much money?
Did I really just read that on the front page? Wednesday January 20. “Donate When You Have Jab”.
Paul Tickner wants us to donate £3 to the NHS every time we have an injection. I’m assuming he thinks the NHS is starved of cash and desperately needs your money.
If you believe this is a noble gesture because you think the NHS needs the £3 per person that Mr Tickner says will cost the NHS, then go ahead and give your hard earned cash to them.
But before you do, ask yourself. Does the NHS need your money, considering how much they get from the taxpayer, and how much they waste?
At the moment they receive £9.5 billion, yes, £9.5 billion every single month. And unless my maths are wrong, that’s a staggering £316million every single day. Or over £219,000 every minute.
Now consider how much they waste. In 2015 the NHS spent £142million on prescribing paracetamol, ibruprofen and aspirin to patients, which can easily be bought in any supermarket over the counter very cheap.
In 2017, the NHS wasted a staggering £2billion paying over the top prices for loo rolls, lost crutches, wheelchairs and batteries. £1billion for doctors ignoring NICE guidelines on treatments proven not to work. £160million on tablets that patients didn’t need. £300billion for bills for infections to patients after hip and knee operations.
Also, a recent study also found out that the NHS spent over £100million in five years on translators for 128 languages.
And drugs worth almost £2million thrown away every year because of faulty fridges.
Also, the cost to the NHS for gender reassignment for each patient is over £19,000.
In 2014, the bill cost taxpayers £17.3million. And in 2015 the budget was increased to £22.7million. And with more people looking to change sex since then, the cost will be many more millions the taxpayer will have to fund.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but they are not life saving operations. Add to the fact the cost of overpaid management consultants in the NHS. In 2014 alone the cost was £640million, with some charging up to a whopping £4,000 a day for their services, and you can see why the cost of the NHS is so great.
So don’t think for one minute the sacred cow that is the NHS is short of funds.
Before they start complaining that they don’t get enough money, they need to take a good long hard look at how much of hard working taxpayers’ money they waste.
It’s always very easy to spend someone else’s money when you have a guaranteed amount of it at your disposal, with no repercussions. These are just a few examples, there are loads more.
So please be my guest and pay £3 towards the cost of the jab. Or why not ask yourself, do they need it?Or would it better off in your pocket.
Eddie King
Elm
The elites are laughing all the way to the bank
Regarding Ashley Smith’s letter ‘Rashford is playing into their hands’.
Ashley is being very harsh in his letter about people with ‘starving’ children, but the letter has done me a favour. What it has done is to write all those things down that one thinks of when making judgements about our materially and financially deprived fellow citizens who exist at the bottom of the job market food chain.
The letter has summarised those thoughts into a coherent whole and to be honest it seems just plain nasty to think like that.
What exercises me more and I think is a bigger scandal is represented by BBC’s Newsnight.
The presenter Emily Maitlis has been sent to America to cover Joe Biden’s inauguration. For someone on £350k a year this is just a jolly at the expense of the licence payers.
Newsnight already has a journalist over there giving reports and so does BBC News.
Her little working holiday has used up all the licence fees of the 16 houses in my cul de sac and a whole lot more for no useful purpose. What she did on the show on Tuesday night and on Wednesday night could have been done from the studio. Now that’s an example of entitlement and abuse of other people’s money that irks me.
When you look at the media and political and public sector elites this sort of extravagance is writ large. I would prefer that Ashley Smith not be scornful of the people on ‘hand-outs’, for what they get is a drop in the ocean compared to what these other people take from our pockets.
Local government chief executives, senior civil servants, NHS administrators, has-been politicians all have profitable arrangements to enrich themselves. Politicians and others sent to the Lords get £300 a day just for signing in; the others I mentioned have a wonderful system in place – leave your £200 grand a year job and take a whopping pay-off as you go and immediately start another £200k job! A revolving door of greed! Having a mate in the government gets you contracts that you can overcharge the tax payer for. Examples are the £30 school meal replacement food boxes, the shipping company that had no ships, Serco, Capita, and other outsourcing companies who get paid bundles regardless of doing their job successfully or not – in fact if they fail they get to renegotiate for more money. What about the hundred or more £1,300 a day “consultants” to help the hapless Matt Hancock run the COVID crisis?
What about the person who did not have a successful track record in managing large organisations but who was appointed by Boris to head up the track and trace system which no one now talks about because it has failed dismally?
All the while Ashley Smith is criticizing the weaker and more vulnerable and more incapable members of society for their inability to manage, the elites are laughing all the way to the bank. Our contempt and anger should be directed towards them!
If only there was a political party that understood this sort of thing. Forget the Nasty party; forget Labour politicians.
I continue to feel disenfranchised. There is no one to vote for to correct the imbalance between the elites greedily enriching themselves and the poor being made poorer with less and less security.
David Silver
via email
