Here are the latest Fenland Citizen reader letters…
Tax the rich to fund the NHS
Almost 10 million people across England could be on NHS waiting lists.
The Office for National Statistics survey found that 21% of the 90,000 adult participants were on a waiting list for a hospital appointment or to start receiving treatment on the NHS.
According to official NHS data in January, the waiting list stood at 7.6 million treatments for 6.3 million people.
The survey also found that waiting list delays were more common among 16 to 24-year- olds. Students and young people are being disadvantaged by the Tories once again.
Waiting times for 16 to 24-year-olds of over a year mean that students, graduates and young workers may not receive the treatment they dearly need in time.
If that treatment is for terminal illness or mental health-related, this can lead to dire consequences, seen in recent spikes of suicide in young people.
Rishi Sunak has failed to meet his pledge to cut NHS waiting times. Instead of investing the money needed and paying NHS staff wages they can live on, he has instead blamed doctors and nurses’ strike actions.
Even Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers which represents NHS bosses, recognised the cause of the backlog. He said: “Hospital, mental health and community trusts are working incredibly hard to bear down on backlogs and deliver timely, high-quality patient care.
But they are up against deep-rooted challenges including workforce shortages and a lack of physical capacity across the NHS and social care.”
Labour’s shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, says he has a plan to cut back the waiting lists. But so far he has raised more private involvement in the NHS, more companies making profit from our health service, and has refused to back striking workers demands for the pay they deserve.
We need to tax the rich to fund our NHS.
John Smithee
Wisbech
Car parking spaces should be wider
Car parking spaces remain the same width so providers can boast their car park offers 200 parking spaces when it practically only has 150 spaces.
Today you only have an average eight-inch gap to open your door and get out. As the average parking space width is between 2m and 2.4m wide and the average car is now 1.8m to 2m wide, ideally parking spaces should now be 3m wide giving you half a metre gap each side.
Disabled parking spaces are 3.6m wide.
In the 1950s a car was just 1.4 meters wide, and the average country road traffic lanes are “3m wide", now allowing the legal requirement of a 1m N/S gap for cyclists and 1m O/S gap for motorcycles, meaning a 5m wide road lane when it’s practically only 3m wide.
Sadly, up to one-third of all car parking spaces across Fenland and Cambridgeshire could be lost if size isn’t upgraded.
M. Burton
Chatteris
Town is dead on its feet
Reading the article in the Citizen on April 10, anybody would think March town is thriving. Far from it.
They talk about wide pavements, benches, tree planting, street lighting, and crossings.
What they forgot to mention is that this town is dead on its feet. Three banks have closed and the only remaining one is closing this summer.
Also gone is the dry cleaners and pet shop.
The only regeneration I can see is Turkish barbers and charity shops. The people involved in this shambles should make an early appointment with Specsavers.
Pat O’Connor
March
