More must be done for our environment

They were our enemies, but could now be our saviours. What a difference 77 years makes.

Has anyone got a copy of Harvest of Messerschmitts? I had one, but can’t find it. This book is a kind of east Kent Cider with Rosie, an invaluable record of life in the Elham valley in 1940.

Each day, the daily life of the villagers (in Elham) is contrasted with the dramatic events just across the Channel in the theatre of war.

When people travelled into Canterbury by bus or train, there were orchards all the way between Barham and Canterbury, and the sound of cuckoos all along the valley. Now the last vestiges of that idyllic (well, in summer) rural past is to disappear forever under a concrete overcoat, Mountfield Park. I remember the doctor battling through snowdrifts to visit his patients, the postmaster rising at 5am to light the fire, the vicar and the officers billeted with him drinking all the finest wine from his cellar, so that invading Germans would not get it.

Elham was the epicentre of the Battle of Britain, and many Messerschmitts were shot down. When I was monitoring pollution in St Dunstan’s Street on Thursday, there were two surprises. One, the monitoring equipment was positioned the wrong way round, so that the vents faced the pavement instead of the traffic. Two, I kept hearing people speaking German. I thought most tourists were French day-trippers, but I heard more German than French.

I think that the application for judicial review is a waste of time and money, as the government, council and judiciary have an abysmally low standard of environmental awareness. We are bound to lose.

Instead, we should concentrate on challenging Canterbury’s World Heritage status. Rosemary Sealey Black Griffin Lane, Canterbury

In reality the whole plan is under question.

There is to be no increased funding for this, either within the health service or in social care. Their so-called plan is to reduce the number of beds in our hospitals and any money that is saved transferred to social care.

How this transfer of any saved resources is to work is unknown and unplanned. The NHS is severely underfunded compared with other countries in the EU and the government still plans for a further saving of £22 billion.

I attended the board meeting of the clinical commissioning croup (CCG) this month. The CCG is made up of local GPS and health professionals representing 22 practises across Canterbury, Faversham, Whitstable, Herne Bay, Sandwich, Ash and surrounding rural areas. They decide what NHS provision is made and who provides it.

Concern was expressed during the budget report on the STP implementation. I asked what would happen when the funding for the hospitals and their beds were reduced and there wasn’t the provision made, within the community, to cover the huge shortfall in provision that there already is.

The board chair replied that this was indeed their concern and they did not know. We are fed untruths from a party of government that opposed from the very beginning the setting-up of a national health service.

If our GPS are concerned at what is happening to it, we certainly should be. Anne Belworthy by email