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Charity begins at home

THE financial crisis affecting adult social care means that councils across the country will face a shortfall of some £2.6bn by 2020.

Contrary to the opinion expressed by some very loud voices there is plenty of money in the National Exchequer to cover this amount and, indeed, even double the amount.

We know that the Department for International Development, responsible for handling the country’s excessive Foreign Aid Budget is having real problems in spending its £12bn budget on schemes which can truly be said to reflect the real purpose of Foreign Aid – and which can’t be met by the host country.

The Foreign Aid budget is set at a proportion of the UK’s GDP which is itself a moving ‘target’ and to which the UK is the only country in the world to have enshrined the 0.7 per cent amount in law.

How virtuous it might seem to be caring for the world’s orphans, healing the world’s sick and feeding the world’s hungry, but is it right to let the old, the sick and the hungry of our nation to suffer simply to allow ourselves the luxury of bathing in what one writer termed ‘cause-directed ideology’?

In Charles Dickens’ book Bleak House, Mrs Jellyby’s African project failed after the local king sold the project’s volunteers into slavery in order to buy rum.

Far from being deterred by this grim outcome, Mrs Jellyby quickly sought out a new cause to occupy her time, “a mission with more correspondence than the old one,” which provided new horizons for a permanent campaigner.

I wonder what it is that really motivates the Mrs Jellybys of this world, seemingly full of compassion and the standard bearers of utopian visions. By taking up a virtuous cause they claim and appear to be doing something entirely noble, so much more important than caring for the people they live with or are related to.

Their impatience and neglect or abandonment of others around them is the necessary price of serving a higher purpose.

How easy it is for ideology to become the driving force in one’s life.

Perhaps in 2017 we ought to remember that charity begins at home.

DES MORGAN

Caraway Drive

Swindon

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Save Health Hydro

SO I see the Health Hydro is the latest victim of our leaders’ devil may care attitude to our heritage.

Who put these people in a position where they can make decisions that are irreversible and yet seem about as qualified to do so as a flea?

It’s the old ‘”I’m all right, Jack” mentality.

So long as they get paid and have nice homes to live in they don’t care beyond that.

Meanwhile, the good folk of Swindon see their town abused over and over again by those fat cats who probably don’t even live here.

It makes my blood boil.

If any of you decision makers are reading this letters page, I implore you: leave the Health Hydro alone.

CE BILLINGS

Newport Street

Swindon

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Meeting the costs

I READ in the national press that the government is going to set up votes for a council tax rise of around 10 per cent or more to pay for social care costs.

We the public, of course, will have the say in this vote, but can we be told if the government is also going to increase OAPs’ pensions to meet these costs or do we just starve, while the government gives millions to pop bands in Africa and also to China, India and Argentina?

T REYNOLDS

Wheeler Avenue

Swindon

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Drawbridge mentality

A PHRASE we seem to have been hearing a lot during 2016 is “charity begins at home.”

Well here’s another – “a stitch in time saves nine.” Or how about “many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip”? And then there’s that other old saying “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

The saying “charity begins at home” may be very worthy and full of good intentions, but it’s just that – a saying. It’s not the law of the land. If you want to make a £5 donation to a good cause and decide to send it to starving children in Syria rather than the Prospect Hospice, don’t worry, you won’t be arrested.

Someone may say to you: “Charity begins at home” but you should not feel intimidated – it’s your fiver, do what you like with it.

The people who spout the “charity begins at home” adage are the ones who want to pull up the drawbridge, fill in the Channel Tunnel and say “We’re all right, mate, you look after yourselves. We’ll care for our own here.”

The fact is we are still a rich county; the problem is we don’t know how to distribute that wealth sensibly. So when someone says “charity begins at home” they should address it to the tax dodgers and super rich in their grand houses for whom charity really does begin at home – on their own doorsteps.

There are so many countries who aren’t as rich as us with people suffering dreadfully, through no fault of their own. They may be poor, they may be caught up in a war zone – whatever the circumstances, they will appreciate charity as much as a hospice or a children’s organisation or a war veterans’ charity in this country.

MR W GORDON

Stratton St Margaret, Swindon

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Park free at GWH

I HOPE the GWH Trust abolishes parking fees at the hospital in Swindon this year.

No one really wants to have to be at a hospital - they are either ill, visiting someone that’s ill, or they work there.

None of these people should have to pay to park at the hospital. If they wanted everyone to get the bus there, they shouldn’t have built it on the edge of the town.

MRS D JONES

Wroughton