MPs must fight for NHS funding
After numerous letters recently published in this paper, the financial shortages in our NHS have now come to a head. Last year there was a whole raft of cuts and rationing of services previously available on the NHS.
Recently we had reports of even more drastic savings by West Kent CCG, which funds NHS hospital services, amounting to £3.2 million. This will affect some 1,700 patients who will have “non urgent” operations delayed until at least April, leaving many in agony and distress for months to come.
Inevitably this will push back treatment for new patients even further.
The cuts don’t stop there either as we are now also having a consultation on the Sustainability and Transformation Plans for Kent, probably leading to massive rationalisation of the NHS and further rationing.
I very much hope the KM will keep us informed of where consultation meetings are and that people will be interested enough to go to them.
When oh when will we have a properly funded health service? Perhaps the taxpayer-funded Healthwatch Kent, which describes itself as “an independent organisation set up to champion the views of patients,” can enlighten us as to how it is helping to achieve this?
We also have two MPs covering Maidstone and I’d like to hear how Helen Grant is trying to get a properly funded health service for them. Tony Monk, Westerhill Road, Coxheath
I suggest we all take a deep breath before casting doubt on the NHS as, on the whole, it does a tremendous task, often in intolerable circumstances. People appearing for treatment, some much the worse for wear and others who have left their manners either in their cars or at home. Alan Topley, by e-mail he appealed to those who have seen their hopes for the future sacrificed so that, inter alia, those who run selfish corporations could transfer business operations to low cost nations, thus increasing their personal bonuses, while leaving their workers with dead end jobs, or no jobs at all.
Clearly we have to accept he will put America first but he has also made it clear, while he regards the UK as a great friend, that he is contemptuous of the EU, an attitude increasingly shared by so many in Europe who are suffering the consequences of this federalist project and its insane single currency. As we break free we can join President Trump in creating trading arrangements intended to benefit all our peoples, not just those at the top.
As a billionaire businessman President Trump may seem a strange champion for the ordinary people, but the utter selfishness of the liberal elite has proved their undoing, and we should join with him in a crusade to put the interests of our own peoples first. Colin Bullen Douglas Road, Tonbridge
At 20 stone and 45 years of age Wayne Shaw wasn’t your typical FA Cup footballer. But despite looking like he’d taken the wrong turning on the way to a 3rd XV rugby match, Sutton United’s reserve goal keeper was heaved into the headlines this week.
The National League outfit, who sit four places above Maidstone United, had defied all the odds to reach the fifth round of England’s showpiece football tournament.
The so-called Roly Poly Goalie got in on the action, too, defying his own unique 8-1 odds to scoff a meat and potato pie in the closing minutes of his side’s 2-0 loss to Arsenal.
Like a non-league Sam Allardyce, Shaw’s greed was driven by the murky prospect of financial gain yet he dismissed it as “a bit of banter”. Disgraceful.
Well, not really. The Football Association and the Gambling Commission are not at all impressed, though, and are investigating.
Meanwhile manager Paul Doswell got a bit too excited in describing Wayne as a “global superstar” before conceding his antics didn’t show the club in the best light.
To me this hero demonstrated everything that is still great about the FA Cup, the underdog tales, quirky facts and hysterical fans.
The tournament exists in a no man’s land between bizarre talent contest and the strict rules and regulations of modern football and it’s still on the BBC.
The news of Wayne leaving Sutton broke just as I finished this column, and I’m sure speculation as to why will be rife, but the point remains — the FA Cup is a haven, far removed from the bright lights of the Premier League, where Wayne’s appetite is (we hope) the closest anyone will get to financial misdemeanours. Long may it continue.