Different year same God

AS we are well on into 2021 now, it’s as good a time as any to think about what God is doing in our individual lives, our families, our community, our towns, our nation and in the world at large.

Often, we begin a new year with a sense of vigour, excitement and determination to step into new things. We aspire to shed some unhelpful habits, patterns or old mindsets.

This year, however, began with more of an anticlimax, as though the treacle we trod through in 2020 just got that little bit thicker.

We may be feeling quite sad, lonely or uncertain about the future.

However, new calendar years aren’t the only times we can experience a new start. God is at work all the time, and He may be doing some amazing things in you right now, even if you can’t recognise it.

Think about buds. Although landscapes around us may look colourless and a bit boring right now, there is life absolutely everywhere.

The time will soon come when all that’s been happening over the winter, mostly out of our sights, will come bursting into green shoots and blossom everywhere.

Don’t limit God. He sustains all things. And yet He was willing to step into our world, wrap Himself in human frailty, live sinlessly among us, demonstrate God’s Kingdom, heal the sick, raise the dead and feed the hungry.

He came to show us the way to the Father and lay down His life to redeem the human heart, restore the human condition, and reconcile all things to Himself.

His plan for the world, and our lives, is a big one. Know that He hasn’t dropped the ball. He hasn’t forgotten us.

Wherever you are in your journey with God, remember He’s faithful and is able to accomplish what He started in you!

STE BATE

Leadership coordinator, Glendale Church, Newbury

THE Government are embarking on another restructuring exercise of the NHS and I offer these observations based largely on my family’s health experiences in the UK and abroad in recent years. In two-thirds of the world you either have money/insurance or you don’t get treated, so we have a lot to be thankful for as regards our NHS. The bulk of the treatment you receive in the NHS will be good or excellent, but there are problems. One problem my family experienced arose from cost centre budgeting. If you are discharged from one region’s hospital but live in another region, each region will argue that the other should pay for after-care, so you end up having to pay yourself. As the consultant treating my family member said very bitterly, we no longer have an National Health Service – we have a regional health service.

In the drive to prioritise care in the community, the number of acute hospital beds per 100,000 population was reduced to two. Germany has six.

As a result, the NHS struggles in winter anyway but, as we have seen, when having to contend with a pandemic, the NHS is in real difficulty.

It needs more beds/staff, but that will only come at a major cost.

The relationship between the NHS and social care – and who pays for what – has to be addressed.

It is a massive, contentious problem – it is the elephant in the room.

It is self-evident, therefore, that the NHS needs more resources, but I am not convinced that our current taxation-based model can provide what is needed, particularly when the economic cost of dealing with the pandemic is coming down the track. Only about half the population pays income tax, so increasing income tax impacts unfairly on those who do pay. But raising VAT rates impacts unfairly the other way.

I have limited experience of health systems in some other north European countries, which make use of other sources of funding – but they seem to meet their citizens’ needs, so it makes sense to me to look at their experience to see if we can learn anything and if so make it work for us.

This needs to be done coolly and objectively, setting emotion aside.

The NHS is a valuable service, but it should not be turned into a sacred cow.

Many years ago the Dutch government costed all the demands made on it for the provision of services and concluded that health alone would absorb the whole of the Dutch GNP.

I am sure that what goes for Holland goes for us and that with increasing life expectancy the position now will be far worse.

The plain – and for some unpalatable – truth is that the state can not provide for all our needs, let alone our wants.

Priorities have to be set. Costs and cost effectiveness have to be considered.

Our problem is that we live in a democracy and any politician who is totally honest with the electorate on such difficult issues is less likely to get elected than someone who promises the earth.

But I live in hope.

CLIVE WILLIAMS

Pangbourne Road

Upper Basildon

SORRY, it’s about bins again.

It has been noted we must not waste food.

We, on average, don’t, except suffice to say in the main it is peelings and such like.

I would like to know those that don’t put out green bins, where do they put their food waste?

And you know, they have no compost bin.

Maybe for another time if you have space – the issue of motorway hard shoulders.

The persons who came up with this disastrous idea have no thought for what would happen.

We, the public, knew to open it as another lane was a killer.

Have and will these victims be compensated for their losses or injuries?

BERYL PEARCE

The Close

Great Shefford

I AM writing to you concerning the remarkable opposition to the planning application to build 265 houses in open countryside off Pincents Lane at the edge of Tilehurst in West Berkshire. Following a further round of consultation on this now two-year-old planning application over 1,700 letters of objection have been submitted, over 1,200 of them within the last three weeks. There have been three applications for housing on this land over the past 12 years, all taking several years to resolve. Ten years ago a planning inspector and the Secretary of State for Housing rejected an application on various grounds, including that the site was in open countyside and outside the Tilehurst settlement boundary and that West Berkshire had sufficient housing supply at that time.

The same applies today for both these reasons and, in addition, West Berkshire Council’s highways department are recommending rejection due to traffic concerns in this heavily congested area near the M4, and a council environment officer has pointed out that noise at the site can exceed World Health Organisation recommended levels, again due to the close proximity to the M4.

Quite apart from the 1,700 letters, a new Facebook group has attracted over 1,300 members, a local petition has the support of nearly 1,300, the local MP Alok Sharma has objected and community surveys over the past two years have shown overwhelming oppostion.

Tilehurst, Holybrook and Theale parish councils have all objected in strong terms, as have local councillors. This is an outstanding piece of countryside, with public rights of way, considerable wildlife and is used by many local residents every day of the week.

It is of utmost importance that we protect green space that is so close and accessible to our urban communities, I urge district councillors to vote against this application when its comes to the planning committee in the coming weeks.

We then need to ensure that some form of protection is given to this land so that local people do not have to go through this all over again.

CLIVE TAYLOR

Tilehurst parish councillor Tilehurst Central ward