Help to fund our vital research

This September is ‘Women and Heart Disease Awareness Month’ at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and I’m writing to ask your readers to help fund vital research into heart disease bytaking part in our ‘Bag It, Beat It’ campaign.

Around 28,000 women die from a heart attack each year in the UK – that’s three every hour. But surveys have shown that women are less likely than men to recognise thesymptomsofaheartattack and seek help.

I’ve donated to my local shop and I’d encourage all your readers to get involved this September and do the same. Simplyfillabagwithunwanted clothes, shoes, books, handbags, DVDs, CDs, brica-brac and children’s toys, to ‘Bag It, Beat It’. All donations will help the BHF to fund lifesaving heart research.

It is a sad reality that coronaryheartdiseaseisthesingle biggest killer in the UK, causing the deaths of over 5,470 people in the East Midlands each year, over 2,190 of which are women, but with the continued support of the local community the BHF can fight harder to reduce this figure.

For moreinformation and tofindyourlocalBHFshopvisit www.bhf.org.uk/bagit or to bookafreecollectioncall0808 2500024. It’s a wonderful way to declutter and save lives!

Dame Esther Rantzen both during and after the referendum campaign, we are about as unclear now as we were back then on what direction this country will take whenArticle50getstriggered. I hope it does not sound too contradictory when I say that the only thing that is clear is the uncertainty. There is also asenseoffrustrationamongst both sides of voters during this campaign over whom to blame when something goes wrong.

It is not just our Westminster government that are going to have to deal with the uncertainties, but also city councils like ours here in Pe- terborough. The promise of an established university, for example, could well be put on hold or even dropped completely. This will not just be due to the potential lack of funding from the Eurasmus Plus scheme, but also a lack of integration of the skills and industry that can be of a great significance to any community that we have in the past gained from the single market and the EU membership. Tory austerity and increasing tuition fees have also contributed to a drop in the number of home students going to university in the UK and has thus decreased the likelihood of this becoming a success in Peterborough. As the largest settlement in the country to not have a recognised university all of this could be a huge blow for us.

Peterborough’s long standing ambition to become the UK’s environmental capital could also be in doubt if the council end up following the example laid down by the national government in scrapping whole environmental committees, departmentsand subsides.

I do, however, welcomethe responsesgivenfromauthorities and other leading figures when condemning the out- rageous actions of a the few individuals who have targeted Eastern Europeans as “vermin” and I am glad that the city has so far remained united.

Let us hope t hat t his strength i n being united across communities can continue as I believe it inevitably will carry us through uncertain times andit will bewethe people who make the right choices for ourselves which should lead us to make a success of whatever may come.

Joseph Wells Deputy Co-Ordinator, Peterborough Green Party