Irony of cuts to the care we fought so hard for

THE government is to contribute £21m towards building a memorial to those who died on the D-Day landings 1944.

No-one can gainsay the sacrifice these men made in helping to liberate Europe from an appalling and barbaric tyranny.

However, it is ironic that the same government is presiding over a decline in the social security system that for British people was one outcome of that victory so hard-won.

The very services – Social Care and the NHS – that survivors of World War II and their children are now of an age to be in particular need of are stressed to breaking point, requiring a significant cash injection after years of neglect.

And many of the grandchildren of D-Day veterans are among those suffering a shortage of social housing and facing the insecurity of renting privately.

In 1941 John Pudney, then an intelligence officer in the RAF, wrote the poem For Johnny.

The first lines read: Do not despair/ For Johnny head in air.

The last verse goes: Better by far / For Johnny-the-bright-star, / To keep your head, / And see his children fed.

I think that says it all. IF the letter appearing in the Examiner (Monday, March 6) by Dr David Hill is factually correct – and I have no reason to doubt that it is – then all of us who cherish and hold dear our values of democracy should be alarmed.

This is not altogether a matter of how each of us voted on June 23 but how we are all being manipulated by the political classes. I suggest knowledge of this piece of legislation has been suppressed like so much of previous EU legislation has.

If article 50 is not triggered by Mrs May this month through further delay tactics by the House of Lords, then I believe we shall suffer a huge and irreversible blow to democracy and