Letters: Thursday, July 7, 2016

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Interesting perspective

YOUR correspondent Allan Woodham offers a very interesting perspective on the EU referendum result.

He asks that, as the Leave campaign did not have a Plan B, should it have won the vote?

Surely the fact is that the Leave campaign did not require a plan A or plan B simply due to the fact that it couldn’t implement ANY plan as it isn’t the Government.

The referendum was to determine a single issue - our membership of the EU. It was incumbent on the Government to have a clear plan A and plan B.

I am sure the Civil Service has at least two plans to hand when a General Election takes place.

Mr Woodham is quite correct in his condemnation of the exaggerations made by both sides.

When will politicians learn that the public is no longer impressed with the bombast of a shrill voice uttering obvious nonsense?

I don’t share Mr Woodham’s sympathy for Scottish voters.

They have had two referendums and Mrs Sturgeon lost both (albeit with her parochial view she can claim that Scotland voted to leave - she joins Sunderland in that respect).

Perhaps Sunderland ought to secede from the North East.

The reality is that Scotland is part of the UK and the vote was all about the UK’s membership, it’s not always ‘all about Scotland.’ Finally, Mr Woodham claims the Leave vote does not represent ‘one of Britain’s finest hours’ - surely he cannot believe that a decision of the majority based on a free and fair election is ‘wrong’ simply because it didn’t produce the result the minority wanted?

What your correspondent and I will agree on is that in the days following the referendum some silly things have been said and done, including the resignation of the Prime Minister which was the self indulgent action of a man who only lost a vote.

I can think of a number of other issues for which he might have resigned but this was not one of them.

As for the Labour Party’s woes - words fail me.

DES MORGAN Caraway Drive Swindon

Brexit and the NHS

I WAS reading the recent issue of the Swindon Advertiser where headline news was the effect of Brexit on employing staff, in particular nurses and doctors. In fact, Brexit should make the NHS safer. Firstly the employment of nurses and doctors from the EU countries would need them to have the safety checks etc. which are imposed on those recruited outside the EU. Therefore, it would minimise the risk of poorly trained doctors and nurses being employed. Secondly, the NHS is now secure, in that being in EU the NHS would have eventually been ‘privatised’ at some point. The TTIP talks between the EU and the USA are about setting up a trade arrangement which intends to create an open market.

It should be noted that the EU would only need majority agreement among the then 28 nations, the UK would not have any veto over the matter. It has been said that the UK could negotiate a special arrangement, but any such event would only be for a short period. Also should any decision of the UK affect the profit margins of the big US companies, the UK Government would be required to pay these companies compensation. This has already happened within the EU when Germany closed its nuclear reactors down after the Japanese Fujiyama nuclear reactor was damaged in an earthquake. Two of these German reactors were owned by a Swedish company who successfully sued the German government for compensation. By definition monopolies (of which the NHS is one) do not and cannot allow competition. Therefore the EU will tell the UK government to privatise the NHS. This would result in everyone in the UK having to take out private health insurance. The American and EU health companies would immediately swoop on the new private health system, cherry pick the best bits (and discard the rest, which would include mental health or care of the elderly amongst others as being not cost effective). Interestingly, neither the so-called ‘protectors’ of the NHS (Labour and the Unions) flagged this up as an issue for the people of this country to be told. If the UK Government should decide to privatise the NHS the electorate could kick them out at the next election. Under the EU system this could not happen. What the NHS needs is a thorough audit of all its expenditure. Having worked in the NHS for 40 years before retiring there has been a creeping increase of administrators, many in posts which were especially created for them. I am fully aware of the need for an administration, whose function is to support the clinical staff in caring for patients. The intent was to have all purely administrative issues taken from the clinical staff. Unfortunately, we now see administrative staff making decisions over clinical issues, overriding the concerns of the doctors and nurses. In my experience I have seen and heard of cases where major surgery has been postponed or cancelled in order to be able to ‘meet’ targets for relatively minor surgery cases to be met.

Talking of targets, one of the main reasons that caused the ‘mixed wards’ problems was the need to admit a patient into a bed from the A&E department before the target was breached. The consequence was that the patient, regardless of the sex, was admitted to the first available bed. This in turn saw young females being admitted on to a male ward. This only happened with the introduction of targets. There are many other issues which would need to be dealt with. Should the NHS be paying for cosmetic surgery (eg breast enlargements, removal of tattoos and other body image concerns). I do not of course include those with genuine problems (e.g. birth marks, ‘bat’ ears, etc). In conclusion I would like to say that until I retired I was a staff nurse and later charge nurse on a paediatric intensive care unit at St George’s Hospital in London for 14 years. ANTHONY KINDER, MSc, SRN RSCN.

Limes Avenue Pinehurst Swindon

Implement Article 50

THESE are disgraceful antics, there is no other word that can define it, from the people who are in charge of our nation.

Both major parties are posturing over self-interested political gain.

Do they not realise that Britain has made the most historic vote in my lifetime to free us from the shackles of a totalitarian empire that now crumbles before our eyes as our fight for freedom gains momentum.

Let me make a clear point, now that the fear campaign regarding financial collapse has been destroyed by the true facts of global economics if the British public are coerced into another referendum, as other nations have been, the majority will vote for out - I don’t like the term leave, it is too mild.

Another referendum will reflect the true will of the people now that the fear factor has been proven to be a pack of lies.

The establishment know that. Their next attempt at appeasement to Brussels will not be tolerated by the British electorate.

Article 50 now, by demand of the nation, should be implemented forthwith by Parliament.

The Prime Minister should be told from all Parties that the democratic will of our island nation must be enacted.

BILL WILLIAMS Merlin Way Covingham Swindon

Parties in disarray

FOR all of those people still moaning about the Referendum result, just think about all of those young men who died and never had a say in their future.

They did it to free our country and for peace to reign.

Yes, our politicians at the time wanted peace as a result, but not to be dictated to by countries we defeated and helped.

‘Freedom’ will come at a price, but we hope we can resolve that.

But when it comes to requiring a concerted effort to run and stabilise this country, the political parties are in disarray.

They are all fine when they talk and argue over insignificant items and attend their ‘white tie’ functions.

Let them now earn their immense salaries and expense account which they take out of the pockets of most of us and do some work for US.

CHRIS GLEED Proud Close Purton

Every vote counts

I READ with interest the comment made by Steve Thompson about betrayal of the young.

Well, I can tell him from first-hand experience on the night of the election certain young persons I know felt it was more important to play on their computer and another thought doing her hair was more important than legging it to the polling station.

I have no doubt there were lots of youngsters who thought it more important to listen to someone twanging their guitar at Glastonbury festival, plus those who went to the Euro’s to watch the footie, rather than go and vote in the European referendum; after all they must get their priorities right.

What has happened in my opinion, is that now the vote is over, they have realised they should have voted.

Due to the closeness of the vote they now want to change the outcome by having another referendum.

There are those who are blaming the Brexiteers, but the truth is, it was those that didn’t vote that made all the difference, 29 per cent of the electorate did not vote.

Unbelievable, nearly one third of the electorate felt this important decision on staying in the EU was not worth voting on.

They left it up to the 71 per cent of the electorate to make the decision.

The 71 per cent of the electorate who did vote ended up with 52 per cent in favour for leaving and 48 per cent for remaining.

Like the first referendum under Harold Wilson’s Government, he said “that those who don’t vote are deemed to be in favour of the majority.”

Subsequently, we remained in the Common Market.

So therefore, those who did not vote were happy to accept the outcome whatever it was.

So this referendum, when broken down, shows that of the 71 per cent of the electorate who voted, 37 per cent was for leaving and 34 per cent were for remaining.

The 29 per cent who didn’t vote are assumed to be for the majority, as they did not care what the outcome was.

You can now say the result is 66 per cent of the electorate is for leaving and 34 for for remaining – a clear majority. So this proves every vote does count.

ALLAN WOODHAM Nythe Swindon

Idealogical reasons?

SOME while ago I suggested to Swindon’s Cabinet that they should be pressing the Government to abandon their target for a £10bn surplus by 2020.

As I pointed out to them if the target was break-even then the £6bn of cuts to local government would not be necessary.

They wouldn’t even have to abandon their support for ‘austerity.’ The anti-democratic parishes proposal was premised on acceptance of the level of cuts from central government, based on the surplus proposal. Theresa May, one of the candidates in the Tory leadership election said this surplus target, described by the Financial Times as ‘extreme’ and unnecessary, should be abandoned.

Now the Chancellor has dumped it, citing the dangers of a recession and the economic shock following the vote to leave the European Union.

We can argue over whether the ‘austerity’ programme was necessary in the first place (obviously, I don’t think it was) but this announcement provides an open door for Swindon Council to press for an end to the £6bn cuts to local government.

If the surplus has been abandoned then there is no need for this scale of cuts.

If the Tory administration does not recognise the significance and consequence of this announcement, and simply proceeds with its plans then it will be doing so for ideological reasons.

Of course, we do not know to what extent the budget plans of a new government will differ from Osborne’s but the abandonment of the aim of a £10bn surplus by 2020, at the very least offers the possibility of a scaling back of local government cuts.

There is nothing to stop the administration supporting such a move and pressing their MPs to do likewise.

To proceed with their parishes proposal as if nothing had changed would reinforce the widespread feeling of the local population that they are contemptuous of the opinion of local people.

MARTIN WICKS Welcombe Avenue Park North Swindon

Get priorities right

HAVING read in the paper the week before last that Dial-A-Ride were to have their grant from the Council reduced yet again I thought, “here we go again” as the same thing happened a few years ago as well.

I was then absolutely astounded to read on June 28 that work will shortly start to introduce more cycle lanes in the Covingham and East Swindon parts of the town and this is going to cost an unbelievable £1.25m, if I read it correctly.

I wonder who will benefit from this, as I see very few cyclists on the existing cycle lanes.

I doubt that there will be more than 100 who might use them and this is only in one small part of Swindon.

Dial-A-Ride are going to have £100,000 lopped off their grant (approximately 30 per cent) and this is for a service which benefits hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the borough.

These are people who, without this facility, would not be able to to go shopping, get to work, go to the doctors, hospital or dentists, as well as many other reasons for requiring the services of Dial-A-Ride.

Are the council really saying that cyclists in one small area of the town have a greater priority for council funding assistance than the Dial-A-Ride charity which benefits so many people from all over the borough?

So come on Swindon Borough Council, have a proper look at what you are proposing to do and get your priorities right.

I urge you to rethink your plans.

MIKE LARGE Swindon