Here are the letters from Tuesday’s Lynn News…
Has this beach been tested properly?
It is reported that the water on Heacham Beach is polluted so you cannot swim there.
Yet a mile to the north Hunstanton beach is clear and you can swim there - yet when the tide goes out twice a day the water passes by Hunstanton and it also goes past Old Hunstanton beach, Holme beach and more then likely Skegness beach.
So why are these beaches all clear or has Heacham beach not been tested properly as all this water goes out the north sea twice a day.
Dick Melton
Hunstanton
There should be fines and sanctions
The water companies have come under the spotlight recently, notably at Lake Windermere and Devon.
This is symptomatic of an industry which has not been called properly to account and it has taken two catastrophes to draw scandals which have been going on for too many decades to the public sphere.
In Norfolk we have our own mega pollution waiting to happen, mainly around the Wash. I for one certainly wouldn't bathe in places like Heacham and Hunstanton.
The local water company has a lot to answer for and a moratorium is necessitated to stop further polluting of this endangered bit of coastline.
Measures for the future should include sanctions and fines being imposed if the quality of the water is not improved.
David Fleming
Downham
Let’s not spend many decades regretting this
Having recently returned to Norfolk after some years abroad, it has been interesting to note the conversations and correspondence around the proposed solutions to improving or replacing the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn.
It seems abundantly clear that the various bodies involved, in pushing for a re-build on-site, are missing a generational opportunity to construct a facility on a green field site.
On a greenfield site it would be: future proofed, fit for purpose, has far greater scope for later infrastructure expansion, accounts for the inevitable expansion of the local population, serves as a springboard for major inward investment, and removes the significant constraints imposed by the size and location of the current site.
Added to this, it is surely both counter intuitive and naive to believe that running a busy hospital whilst concurrently reconstructing it is bound to lead to massive and debilitating disruption to patient care throughout the course of the rebuild.
Now is the time to undertake a quick, informed and objective re-assessment of a new-build site against the current one, so that we can all, collectively and ‘hand on heart’, assure ourselves as a community that in 2024 we made the best decision for the future provision of first class medical care for the people of Norfolk. Either that, or we spend the next decades lamenting this lost opportunity in a never-ending cycle of recrimination and regret.
David Heley
Shouldham
We need much more public accountability
I was shocked and disappointed to read the half page piece about the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Trust from chief executive officer Alice Webster.
Shocked because a month ago she called off a talk with Methwold Ladies Group claiming that as a civil servant she must refrain from public comment during "pre-election sensitivities".
That was in April, so other than it now being mid-May and if anything in deeper election purdah, what's changed?
Disappointed, because other than present a potted history of the hospital it added nothing, and was a classic piece of public relations of the "let's all look forward to the gleaming future" variety of tosh.
Cllr Tom Ryves and others have raised a number of important questions about the scheme that should have been answered in full, long ago, and for which there is no excuse not to answer immediately.
If Ms Webster continues to prevaricate the new hospital scheme should be handed to someone willing and able to offer greater public accountability.
Philip Wagstaff
Methwold
Please don’t plunge us into traffic gridlock
Ah... at last, some kind of explanation to excuse the vacuum of information from the QE Health Trust regarding their lack of effort to explore the opportunities presented by the landowners of the Hardwick hospital site.
In her Ward Round column on Friday the CEO Alice Webster patiently explained in simple easy-to-understand language how they sadly just can't talk about the details, money, design, or siting issues within a cramped site etc because the Government forbids it because it's "commercially sensitive" stuff although goodness knows what they've got to hide.
Aren't we the ones paying for it? Aren't we the ones intending to use it?
Clearly hiding behind a supposed government dictat makes for a great excuse and glibly explains the echo chamber tunnel vision the QE Trust has adopted since the Hardwick option was put forward.
Ms Webster may want us to be comforted by her robust contingencies and robust rigorous processes but many of us out in the real world have very robust concerns that her and her board have their heads in the sand about the realities of building a new hospital on the tiny footprint of the existing one... and they know it!
If Ms Webster's risky gamble goes badly wrong, and many suspect it will, I fear the lady will find herself going down in the annals of West Norfolk history as the architect of the ‘Ostrich Gambit’ and our ongoing traffic hell as we all inch gingerly into the gridlocked 'New/Old' Hospital ground.
Steve Mackinder
Denver
Iconoclasm
I walked the ruins
Of Binham Priory
And I felt
The Benedictine bereavement.
Reality is an iconoclasm,
A bereaver
A humiliator
A consumer of work
A destroyer of dreams.
I felt the Jewish bereavement
The Palestinian bereavement
The Ukrainian bereavement
And all bereavements.
But we still work
We still love
We still pray
We still believe
And we see,
We imagine
Better,
Don’t we Jesus?
Peter Coates
Stanhoe
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