Letters to the Fenland Citizen editor
Water park similar to other vanity project
I had to check the date just in case it was April 1. A water park for Wisbech, costing £147,500? The mind boggles. It reminds me of another vanity project... a glass lift in the High Street to view other derelict buildings!
Perhaps someone has been on a course and blue sky thinking was mentioned.
How long would it be before such a water feature would be the target of vandals one day, a week? If the Cambridgeshire mayor wishes to hand out sweeteners prior to an election, I feel that there are more deserving causes in the town.
Nancy Scott-Thompson
Emneth
Bloomers are making a difference already
May I offer congratulations to Chatteris in Bloom for scooping the opportunity to participate in the national In Bloom Awards this year.
I must say their recent involvement and taking over of Chatteris Pocket Park is much appreciated.
I’ve already seen members of Chatteris In Bloom down there planting trees etc. It will also complement and enhance their In Bloom portfolio .
I believe the Young Bloomers has recently been restarted so they can take over from Mark and Sarah , and all the work the local Scouts did by clearing the area to create a new nectar spot for butterflies, bees and insects, as originally was the idea.
However due to a lack of funds , Ideas and physical effort they pocket park group turned it into a wood.
Caroline Pearson
Chatteris
We should never have had any lockdowns
Responding to your reader, Angela Thomas’ letter of March 17.
We should never have had a first lockdown, let alone three since March 2020.
There is no evidence that they work, they have destroyed the economy, removed our freedoms, decimated people’s businesses and caused mental health issues affecting thousands of people.
Then there’s the thousands of people who have had their hospital appointments cancelled. Who knows how many of them will die because of those cancellations. And the thousands of people who will probably die prematurely due to missed cancer diagnosis.
As for all decisions being made now due to Covid cases, not deaths, this is truly disgraceful.
The PCR test which most of the testing is based on was invented over 40 years ago and the inventor insisted that the test should never be used for diagnosis.
It also has a false positive result of up to 80%. The other one they use is the lateral flow test which has a false positive test of up to 50%.
All this for a virus that has not yet been isolated. A virus so deadly you can make your own mask out of any material regardless how porous it is, and you don’t even have to dispose of it in a special container.
And a virus so deadly it only affects you when standing up.
The quoted 125,500 people that have supposedly died from the virus, the majority were in hospital and care homes, and the main reason why the figure is so high is because of the massaging of the figures due to the person testing positive within 28 days of their death and deemed to have died from the virus regardless of whether they died of anything else.
And now we all have to have a new type of MRNA vaccine, that has never been tested for long term effects, and doesn’t stop you getting the virus or spreading it.
Eddie King
via email
Why spend on track and trace but not on nurses?
This year, the Prime Minister and his government has backtracked on the 2.1% pay increase for nurses from April 2021 which was previously agreed and budgeted for by the government.
Instead, the government has proposed a miserly pay increase of 1% for nurses which fails to recognise that throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, NHS nurses have continued to care for patients in the most difficult and challenging conditions imaginable, with professionalism, dedication and humanity.
The Prime Minister has attempted to justify this decision, stating that, although he was “massively grateful to all NHS staff...particularly to the nurses”, these were “pretty tough times” and that “we’ve tried to give them as much as we can at the present time”.
The Prime Minister’s argument that the government can no longer afford to give nurses a pay increase of 2.1% is not at all convincing, especially when it was reported on March 10 that the government has allocated £37billion to fund the government’s Test and Trace Service.
However, since its launch in May 2020, this service has failed in its intended purpose to prevent national lockdowns and there is no clear evidence that it has had a major impact on reducing Covid-19 infections.
It currently employs 2,500 private sector consultants, earning on average £1,100-a-day, with the highest paid receiving a daily rate of £6,624, according to a parliamentary Public Accounts Committee report.
If the government is prepared to spend billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money for a test and trace service which has not been proven to be effective (or even value for money), why are they so unwilling to find the funding to give NHS nurses a 2.1% pay increase in 2021-22, in recognition of their valuable skills and expertise in caring for patients?
Angela Thomas
March
Anger over two bills
Its blatantly obvious that (prime minister) Boris Johnson’s new power grab in the new Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill is simply removing your right to peaceful protest, basic human and civil rights and the freedom of speech. Basically it’s George Orwell’s 1984 in action.
On a separate note, the Conservatives have refused the House of Lords ammendments to the Fire Saftey Bill that would have protected leaseholders from the unsolicited costs of removing flammable cladding from tower blocks etc.
So just like Lacknell House and Grenfell, we are no further forward with flammable cladding and we are waiting for a disaster to happen again.
Mark Burton
Chatteris
Look outside of Labour Party for change
David Silver and John White (Readers’ View, March 24) make some very good points about the achievements and failings of the Labour Party, both past and present.
Labour right-wingers have been telling us for the past year that all will be well now that Jeremy Corbyn has been replaced with an ‘electable’ leader. Problem is, all is not well in Labour.
The elections now looming look bad for the party, and there isn’t much excuse when the government has been revealed as corrupt, incompetent and heartless at every turn during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Opinion polls are putting the Tories well ahead of Labour. It is expected to come third in Scotland, lose seats in Wales, and put in a lacklustre performance in London.
The Hartlepool by-election is quite likely to be won by the Tories. Keir Starmer, heroic as ever, is already blaming poor ratings on a ‘vaccine bounce’. In fact, they point to a ‘Starmer slump’ as the nationalists, Greens and Lib Dems all pick up votes from the main opposition.
Such is the discontent with the Labour leader – just a year after he took office – that there is widespread talk of a leadership challenge, with names like Yvette Cooper and even Jess Philips being mooted.
This clamour will grow if May 6 turns out as badly as many predict.
Jeremy Corbyn remains suspended from the party whip. Ordinary members are being witch-hunted across the country and huge numbers have already left the party.
In a time when there should be no going back to the old normal, Starmer is incapable of providing any kind of left leadership.
Calls for nationalisation, taxing the rich, cutting arms spending, building council houses, are not going to issue from his mouth.
Those wanting change are going to have to look outside Labour.
John Smithee
Wisbech
