BIG PICTURE
THERE are two claims made for the benefits of staying in the EU which need serious questioning.
The first is that the EU has kept the peace, the second that by remaining in the EU we can bring about reform.
The former is a myth, the latter is false hope.
The claim that the EU has brought peace to Europe does not bear scrutiny, it stretches the imagination.
What we do know is that there has been a strangulation of the democratic process with the EU’s ever overburdening conformity designed ultimately to produce a United States of Europe.
And if peace has been kept within the EU territories it has been through Nato and not the EU.
The second argument (which has been given wind by President Obama during his well-timed visit) says, by staying in the EU, Britain can make reforms (it also keeps a firmer presence of US economy and military interests).
Staying in offers a false hope and is a blindness to reality.
Evidence of such falsity may be drawn from how the 27 members states at their summit meeting in Brussels 2015 responded to the Prime Minister’s short list of proposals for Treaty change, only six out of the 27 member countries showed they were ‘very likely to back UK demands’. The rest used the ‘language of diplomacy’.
As one national newspaper said of the final draft from the council, ‘from the land of chocolate came fudge’.
The truth is the EU is incapable of change - it is a prisoner of its past. John Kennedy Tytherigton Macclesfield
NHS NEEDS RESOURCES
AS someone who has recently needed a brain scan in the early hours of the morning I am as keen as anyone to see the NHS provide a seven-day a week service.
Health needs are no respecter of weekends. However, providing such a service requires the full commitment of all professional and supplementary services within the NHS.
The current Secretary of State for Health has a difficult job but his real fight is with his Chancellor of the Exchequer who needs to provide adequate resources to provide the 24/7 service promised by the Conservative Governments Manifesto.
At the moment the NHS wishes to increase its services under a fixed cash budget deeply hobbled by the ideologically driven ‘Austerity Programme’ that has already crippled local government services and driven the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to resign his post over the dreadful cuts to services for the disabled.
Jeremy Hunt needs to turn his firepower on the Treasury and demand the resources necessary to provide an NHS that can genuinely deal with the nation’s health requirements seven days per week rather than hounding doctors into actions that are in serious danger of destroying public trust in our National Health Service and those who serve professionally within it. Ken Edwards Bollington
HELP HEALTH STAFF DELIVER
I HAVE spent a few weeks in hospital over the past couple of years and had my life saved twice.
All hospital staff were wonderful, but working enormously hard to hold the service together.
Nothing ever made me doubt their commitment to making the NHS work for all, but I did see their struggle.
We all deserve for them to be helped to deliver the service they want and we all might require some time. Jane Vigon Windmill Street Macclesfield
CYNICAL RHETORIC
AS someone whose life was saved by Junior Doctors one Saturday night and the Sunday exactly one week later, so much for there not being a seven-day NHS.
Cynically it seems to me that the Government’s rhetoric about a sevenday service seems to be about getting the NHS ready for more privatisation, so that in-growing toe nails can be treated on Saturday mornings.
I hope the electorate realise how much the NHS has improved our lives.
Please do not let the government and the private health providers turn this into a situation where health can be further subject to the profit motive. Peter Sadler Moss Lane Bollington THIS Thursday, May 5th you have the chance to vote for a Police and Crime Commissioner for Cheshire.
Last time around these elections didn’t exactly take the world by storm.
In Cheshire the turnout was just 14 per cent and there was one polling station in South Wales where nobody voted at all.
As readers of this newspaper you are better informed than most, but if you think you haven’t heard too much about it direct from political parties, there is a simple and practical reason.
To campaign as actively as voters deserve would cost more than a General Election Campaign.
Reaching out to about 800,000 Cheshire voters without the free postage for leaflets that is available in a General Election requires deeper pockets than ours.
The ostensible reason is that, in times of austerity, the taxpayer shouldn’t have to bear the postage costs. I would argue that if we are to have additional elections, then those expected to vote should have every chance to be fully informed.
In this election, as well as supporting your first choice candidate, you can also exercise a second preference vote, a further reason for needing to be fully informed.
Whatever your allegiance, I hope that you will turn out and vote and, if in doubt, check out the candidates’ websites.
I congratulate Cheshire East on their decision to go the Supreme Court to “… preserve the significance of Local Plans and Neighbourhood Plans in determining applications for development…”
Presumably this means they will not rush through King’s School application to develop the controversial Fence Avenue Green Belt site before the Local Plan Inspector has given his decision. To do otherwise would not only be hypocritical it would undermine its very expensive Supreme Court case.