Hospital name change would rob town of its heritage

THE whole nation was shocked last year by a drunken youth urinating on a war memorial. This act displayed a complete disregard for the ultimate sacrifice by those who died for our freedom.

Now our war memorial, yes, our war memorial, is to suffer the same disregard. Our War Memorial Hospital in Selby is now to be renamed by some faceless, nameless jobsworths who have not seen fit to consult with the people of our town and are intent on riding roughshod over the feelings of everyone who has an emotional link to those who died.

Who are these people who feel they have the right to rob our town of such a part of its history?

Such was the sadness, distress and appreciation of the people of Selby after the First World War that they scrimped and saved to buy the land and to build the hospital in memory not only of the Selby lads who died, but for all who died with them.

My own grandparents paid sixpence a week which was what they could afford and my uncle’s name is on the Abbey memorial to those who died. They paid, with all the others in the town, to buy the land and build the hospital to be called The Selby War Memorial Hospital and so it should remain.

Enough is enough! It is time for the residents of Selby and all the organisations in the town to get together and oppose this change of name.

At least the youth who urinated was drunk and said he didn’t know what he was doing. These people are not drunk, they know what they are doing but do not care for the town, its heritage nor the feelings of its people.

From: D Birch, Smithy Lane, Cookridge, Leeds.

Isn’t it time for Andrew Rawnsley, Secretary of State for Health, to stop pushing the changes he wants to make in the NHS and to listen to what the country wants?

This man appears to be not listening to anyone; in fact even when he is being interviewed, he will not listen. To date, he hasn’t listened to a fairly large number of his own Conservative Party MPs; he wasn’t listening to the Coalition’s Lib Dem members at their conference.

He is not listening to the General Medical Council or the GP Medical Council or the College of Surgeons, or anyone else who has a say on the NHS (Yorkshire Post, March 16).

According to him, we should have a question and answer session on all this.

Do people remember, as I do, when the Conservatives were in power and privatised water, gas, electric, coal, rail and BT?

This was done to raise money to keep the country going because they had managed to close down all our industry and bring us “up to date” with our new service industry of the city. We all know to our cost today of the good they have done to the country.

The change that Andrew Lansley is pushing for is not going to leave us with any alternative to the NHS – it’s just going to be private medicine and no matter what he says that it will be paid for with NHS budgets, at the end of the line we will be paying more.

Before this gets too far down the line, we need to write, text, email or phone our Members of Parliament to stop this madness and at least let’s push for a referendum. We all know that the NHS was out of control on spending and bad management, but breaking it up is not the answer.