We are not impressed by these bridge excuses
WE have been waiting for our footbridge to be repaired at Hendre Lake for more than 18 months.
We telephoned the parks department and they said they were waiting for the new St Mellons train station to be built before repairing it.
As the train station has been postponed, we don’t see why they can’t repair the bridge now.
The council has spent £4million on a farm and £10m towards the train station, so is it possible they could spend some money on our footbridge?
If other Hendre Lake users see this letter, please could they ring the parks department and become a pest?
Maybe they will pull their finger out and get it done. I am sure it won’t cost a fortune. Here’s hoping they read this.
LI Brown
St Mellons, Cardiff
West must push for Ukraine ceasefire
WESTERN nations should urge Ukraine and Russia to agree to a ceasefire now, in order to negotiate the best possible, and least damaging, peace terms for both parties, accepting sacrifices, for a safer future.
I must not suggest that this is easy now, but the target – peace – only becomes more difficult to attain, later on.
I believe we can compile a long list of many advantages, for all nations and people, with no disadvantage to anyone.
More than that, I hope to avoid the progressive escalation of events, beyond our control, from national conflict, to dangers extending to the possibility of elimination of the human race and higher mammals on the planet, from radiation sickness, caused by intentionally ruptured nuclear plants worldwide, after seven other nuclear powers were drawn into the war, claiming to be threatened. It is obvious to detect the aggressive obsessions now, which must involve so many.
It seems an unnecessary risk to take.
At the same time I recognise that most British adults condemn my perspective with scorn and contempt as gutless.
They prefer and insist that the war must continue.
From the words of politicians, I cannot tell if they think a ceasefire would be supported by them in three or five years, after so much more death and destruction. Is that more or less likely?
They are assertive about war, and vague about peace, at the same time.
There is no sense in me thinking that I am right and so many others are wrong. That is the mark of the bigot, who is unlikely to be so smart. But I must confess that I just cannot see where.
CN Westerman
Brynna
PFI loans soaking up health funding
I was shocked by the letter from Ian Roblin (“Time for debate as NHS isn’t working”, November 3) in which he puts forward the case that the NHS should be thrown open to market mechanisms as a solution to the problems it faces.
The creation of the NHS was the greatest concession working people have ever won in this country, and must be defended against all attempts to hive it off to the private sector. When pressed on the issue, the defenders of free market capitalism, the Tories, deny through gritted teeth their wishes to marketise the NHS. There has been the case over several decades, the slow creep of privatisation, as well as funding shortfalls which have led to the NHS reportedly on the brink of collapse.
£475m was spent by the NHS in 2020-21, just to pay interest on Private Finance Initiative (PFI) loans alone. With interest linked to RPI inflation, as the costs of goods rise, so does the size of PFI debt, and of annual repayments too.
This is at a time when the NHS is facing cuts of £12bn a year by 2024-25 as Covid funding is withdrawn, and an estimated £6bn of increased costs next year due to rising prices.
The PFI contracts ensure repayments are guaranteed and will take precedence over all other NHS expenditure such as staffing and equipment. Investors in PFI schemes make huge profits while the NHS and patients suffer.
The PFI schemes should be scrapped, and the buildings taken into public ownership, with compensation only in case of proven need.
The pharmaceutical companies also hold the NHS to ransom, charging whatever they like for essential drugs. Procurement is also in the private sector. Cleaning, security and car parking are other sectors which have been privatised.
A further marketisation would see the more profitable sectors being sold off, to the highest bidder, and the “unprofitable” being left to a smaller underfunded NHS.
Ian further holds up the provision of food and housing in the private sector as an example to follow for the NHS. Does he not know we are in a cost of living crisis, which affects not only the ability of millions to put food on the table, but also those who either rent or pay a mortgage facing record bills.
A heated national debate would be welcome, if a forum for such existed at the moment. Far from
The council has spent £4m on a farm and £10m towards the train station, so is it possible they could spend some money on our footbridge?
LI Brown St Mellons, Cardiff
“socialists being rude and aggressive”, as Ian implies, it would be a case of presenting facts, and the opinions of healthcare professionals and the general public. Far from supporting further marketisation, the private sector needs to be driven out of the health service. Graeme Jones
Socialist Party Wales
Recalling the days before we had NHS
MR Ian Roblin’s attack on the NHS (November 3) seemed to be a defence of the privatisation of all essential services.
The tone of his letter was also designed to raise the ire of people who believe in the NHS. His last paragraph pleaded for a heated national debate with no rudeness or aggression, so I will forgo any.
Normally I would not start up at the ranting of a right-wing person, but having just come back from the local surgery where I was so well looked after by a nurse practitioner, Siobhan, in consultation with a Dr Boyce, I have decided to have a bash.
Back before the NHS came into being, I well remember a woman acting as a secretary-come-treasurer of a local doctor in Ferndale, a Dr Flooks, walking around the streets knocking on doors for
weekly payments of sixpence to offset expenditure on ill health or accident. One windy day I was unlucky enough to suffer a cut cheek from a flying piece of roof slate. It cost 1/6 pence to have three stitches. My uncle exclaimed: “That’s the price of three pints of beer,” while my aunty said: “Or the cost of three loaves of bread.”
My wife suffered greatly in the last two years waiting for a hip replacement operation. It cost £12,000-plus to sort out privately. Luckily we had savings to put to an end her agony. What the cost of my rugby injuries would have been without the NHS, I shudder to think about.
What I do know is that the Tories have been in power for more than 12 years, that Cameron and May promised the NHS was safe in their hands, that Boris Johnson blustered the same. That Liz Truss did not last long enough to lash us into believing she was the political equivalent of Florence Nightingale.
Many years ago I heard Aneurin Bevan speak about the establishment of the National Health Service. The biggest fight he had, he said, was with the British Medical Association. And the only way they agreed to cooperate was if they were allowed to continue their private practice.
While Brexit, the pandemic and 12 years of Tory ideology has reduced the NHS, the private sector is doing well. Was that the idea of Tory ideology in the first place?
OJ Knott
Pembroke
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