December 5: Schoolboy’s tribute to the fallen

On Remembrance Sunday he placed a posy of poppies on the RAF Memorial in Pollington. Following that, Renee Ounsley, Secretary of Pollington Airfield Memorial Garden, received a note from him enclosing a copy of his homework which featured Remembrance Sunday and noted: “51 Squadron RAF members are very pleased with it and I cried when I read it.”


Dear Soldier,

I AM writing to tell you that you haven’t been forgotten. Today, Remembrance Sunday, I visited the memorial garden at RAF Snaith in Pollington by the side of the old runway.

The service started when RAF pilots marched in wearing their shiny medals with pride as the lone bugler played the Last Post and the flags were lowered to half mast. We stood in silence.

I thought about what I had seen on TV, of the black and white images of planes dropping bombs and planes falling from the skies. I thought how brave you all were. Were you ever scared? Did you ever think of yourself when you gave your life for me?

Then it was my turn. Stepping forward, gently carrying the posy of scarlet poppies I bent down and placed the poppies on the stone.

Taking a step back, I bowed my head while quietly saying “Thank you”.

Your bravery will always be special to me.

Yours faithfully,

Thomas Calpin

Adding up to laughing stock

From: TC Robinson, Sheffield.

OH well, another bad day at the office. Reference of course to the Chancellor’s recent Autumn Statement to Parliament, not what had been promised, not what we had wanted to hear and certainly not what the financial and economic situation of the country demanded – which was for a deflationary statement and not an inflationary one which is the one we were given. Incidentally the assertion that it wasn’t inflationary is a fallacy; a year from now the nation’s indebtedness will be greater than it is today.

Just as important was the total absence of any meaningful proposals or measures to deal with all the other problems facing the nation, particularly the question of immigration and the appalling state of our defensive capability. I don’t think it can be difficult keeping one squadron of fighters airworthy and having an aircraft carrier two years behind schedule is going to impress other nations. We are a laughing stock on the world stage. No wonder David Cameron presents a forlorn figure when he goes on the world stage today.

To end this tirade, I would like somebody to give me a logical reason why we should continually give so much foreign aid abroad when much of it ends up in the hands of fraudsters or tyrants?

From: Barrie Crowther, Walton, Wakefield.

SO Labour MP David Lammy thinks George Osborne’s Autumn Statement windfall is down to the extra 336,000 immigrants allowed into this country who are all working and paying tax?

While these people may all have jobs and pay tax, the maths don’t add up. He takes no account of services having to cope with these numbers.

No answers to queues at A&E over crowded hospitals, over-subscribed schools, pressure on housing, congested roads, etc. These services all cost and the unanswered question is at what expense to the existing population.

Putting NHS under strain

From: Martyn L Scargill, Kilham, East Yorkshire.

YOUR correspondent AW Clarke of Sutton Upon Derwent (The Yorkshire Post, November 28) is absolutely correct in the irritation that he/she feels regarding the illustrations about elderly people in reports by the BBC on the state of the NHS.

Perfectly right, the elderly are not to blame for “growing old”, yet they are obviously regarded as a headache by “the powers that be”. Indeed, we should have more footage about drunken young people drunk out of their minds on a Saturday night. What about all the extra burden that falls upon over-worked paramedics to sort out this lot?

At the end of the day, most of these deplorably treated pensioners have worked hard and paid into the system all their lives. Does anyone share these concerns?

From: Gordon Bray, Grange Road, Golcar, Huddersfield.

The NHS seems to be continually going on about the shortage of doctors and nurses in an attempt to justify their efforts to attract recruits from abroad. Don’t you think we are being rather selfish?

These people have been trained, not necessarily to our standards, at the expense of their home countries and then come to Britain when they would be much more useful trying to improve the health of their own people.

We make such a fuss when a few nurses and doctors go out to a Third World country to try to deal with a medical crisis, and yet we rob these same countries of their home-grown talent.

Why cannot we train our own doctors and nurses and not rely on immigrant labour? I remember, many many years ago, when the media was complaining that we were training so many nurses in the NHS that there were no jobs available at the end of their training. What has gone wrong?