If you can’t be bothered to vote stop bleating

It was last Thursday morning that I received a letter from the neurology department of the William Harvey hospital. It seems that my doctor had written about me to the hospital last July.

The letter I received expressed a degree of puzzlement that there should have been a seven-month or so delay before the notice from my doctor was passed to the neurology people.

When I phoned to find out what it was all about, I got the impression that the lady to whom I spoke was herself dissatisfied by the way things had gone but she was far too discreet to say so.

The fact is that the Harvey’s reputation suffers to a certain extent as a result of the clear incompetence of the management/ booking people.

If the NHS and the government want to save some money and improve the service, they should have a thorough clear out of these departments and get in an intelligent school-leaver or two.

And while on the subject of clearouts, I can only hope that all the people who whinge about the destruction of Ashford will have the intelligence and honourable good sense to register themselves as voters and turn up at the polling stations.

The sad thing (or one of the sad things) is that many of the people who complain are those who make the vainglorious boast that implies they’re too intelligent to waste their time voting. If you don’t like something and can’t be bothered to do something about changing it, you’d best remain silent.

And a two-line bleat tucked in between cutesy pictures of fluffy kittens peering out of teacups and chocolate-besmeared infants on one of the ghastly ‘social media’ sites achieves nothing.

A local paper, such as the KE, is a valuable asset to any community. There are thosewho ignorantly dismiss such publications as boring and uninformative.

Many of these will turn to the Daily Mail and Express, whose distortions and sometimes outright lies provide reinforcement of their xenophobic prejudices.

Although our blinkered representatives tend to pursue their ideological paths regardless, the local paper offers a weekly snapshot of the community at large and an opportunity for the less closedminded councillors to discover what the people whom they purport to serve actually think and do.

Perhaps some of them will actually take notice.

‘A local paper, such as the KE, is a valuable asset to any community’