Letters - April 29, 2016

Since then, during their terms of office the Tories have injured the NHS with lack of funds, inadequate training and pay. With the present Conservative regime, we see the biggest onslaught on the Health Service there has ever been, with strikes over new contracts and the threat of imposing these contracts on all junior doctors.

New contracts are also an issue facing ambulance workers, now complaining that the Government is failing to honour promises to improve pay and conditions of ambulance staff.

Three unions are set to have consultative ballots with their members in respect of the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s failings.

I was standing shoulder to shoulder with striking doctors at Victoria Hospital and was informed that the next issues over new contracts imposed by Jeremy Hunt will be in connection with consultant doctors, and therefore disputes over working conditions and pay could re-emerge.

Jeremy Hunt’s mantra that patients are suffering with the junior doctors strike action is spurious. It is clear this world-renowned institution is being abandoned in favour of Tory ideology to run healthcare on schemes run for profit by private companies.

We must stand by our NHS and its workers and reject the Government’s unhelpful contracts and privatisation plans, in order to save our NHS

Roy Lewis

Haddon Road

Blackpool

HEALTH

Hunt is insulting the people he needs

No employer ever won an argument with his staff by tearing up their contracts of employment.

And no employer would obtusely pick a quarrel with a labour force whose intellectual and educational achievement puts them in the brightest group of people in our society.

They can read, they can understand, they know from their own work how government changes are damaging our NHS.

This is a dispute which must be ended. We must try and persuade the intransigents in Whitehall that their high-handedness is bound to harden the attitude of the doctors. A seven-day health service won’t be achieved by insulting a key element in such plans.

David Owen

Westcliffe Drive

Blackpool

ENVIRONMENT

Reinstate free bags for dog owners

Unlike your correspondent Keith Hallam (Your Say, Gazette, April 25) I believe there was more than one flaw in the original writer, Brian Crawford’s plan to deal with dog faeces.

To start with, he should be addressing our tight wad Labour council, who some months ago, dispensed with the provision of free bags for the collection of dog poo. Previously these were immediately available in special dispensers in every park and a boon in instant disposal.

Schemes to appoint enforcement officers to collect dog mess would be superfluous.

As for Mr Crawford’s idea that owners be fined up to £1,000 for failing to respond, have the animal put down, is totally ridiculous. It’s not the dog’s fault, and as aforesaid, a supply of collection bags would give no one an excuse to not Keep Blackpool Tidy.

There will always be irresponsible owners, but do we need all that DNA pantomime and draconian punishments for the few transgressors?

Neil Kendall

Stamford Avenue

South Shore

HILLSBOROUGH

Those responsible can hide no longer

I feel a strong sense of empathy and comfort for the families of the Hillsborough disaster who courageously campaigned for justice marking British legal history.

The inquest decision 27 years on which concluded 96 victims were killed unlawfully, highlights the failings that occurred in Sheffield on April 15, 1989.

The families who lost their loved ones deserve closure and nothing but the truth.

It’s fair to assume this landmark case has further damaged the dam of deceit that has protected a number of individuals.

A river of truth will continue to flow with the historic cases of suspected constitutional cover-ups and misadventures.

Having a knighthood or an honourable title should no longer offer senior figures suspected of wrong doing a privileged position.

The Hillsborough campaign was 27 years of sheer tenacity to unearth the truth. Not only did those families suffer the loss of their loved ones, they had to cope with a prolonged deep sense of injustice.

In the fullness of time, the truth always remains the same.

Stephen Pierre

via email