YP Letters: Put money into NHS, not foreign hands

I FIND it disgusting at a time when Government funding for the NHS is being squeezed that they have set up Sustainability and Transformation Plans to divert more NHS money into shareholder profits.

Patients are being denied prescriptions and procedures they need at a time when new NHS money is going to healthy shareholders’ offshore tax havens through the financial markets, ignoring the patients.

Our NHS is in danger of being Americanised, where taxpayers pay more money for less treatment than anywhere else in the developed world.

From: R Watkinson, Leeds.

WHY are we still sending foreign aid to other countries when our own country is on its knees?

The National Health Service cannot cope because it is not receiving money it needs due to donations being sent abroad via foreign aid. Our own country is beginning to look Third World due to all the food banks.

We have made a decision to leave the EU and we need to inform Mr Tusk enough is enough and no more payments should be made.

Don’t blame the teachers

From: Caroline Thomas-Smith, Leeds.

SOME people really need to wake up and realise who to aim their frustration at. Fining schools for training days? No, that’s not a day in your child’s education. That’s a day you know about way in advance, a day that was taken off teachers’ holidays a while back.

Fining teachers for going on strike? They already lose a day’s pay. And they are not striking because they want longer in bed, they are doing so for better working conditions. Which ultimately means a better learning environment for your child.

Look at what the Government is doing to the education system, making cuts to already stretched resources. Wanting teachers to work longer when they are already exhausted. Asking teachers to then give up holiday time, to teach children you have removed for a holiday.

Yes, teachers get lovely holidays, but find me a teacher who does not work during that time. I, for one, don’t know any.

When you select the school your child goes to, you are agreeing their terms of learning. That will include what excellent attendance is (in most cases 95 per cent).

Most things are not dictated by the school, it’s the Government. Don’t bully teachers, who are already stretched and doing their best when it’s not their fault. It’s not a comparison.

Wonderful tale of valour

From: Canon Michael Storey, Healey Wood Road, Brighouse.

WHAT a wonderful article (The Yorkshire Post, April 6) about Jack Harrison VC and his action in Oppy Wood on May 3, 1917, during the First World War.

It so happens that my father, Private WB Storey 10/1418, East Yorkshire Regiment, was taken prisoner that day.

With a friend, I am going on a tour of various battlefield in May, including being at Arras on May 3, and, hopefully, Oppy Wood.

My father never worked on May 3, and like most of the First World War veterans, he never told me any details, except 
that he was captured in Oppy Wood.

I hope to stand somewhere in the region of where he was taken prisoner – I’ll remember Jack Harrison VC too. God bless him.

Dead deserve more respect

From: J Holdsworth, Leeds.

I AGREE with others – Killingbeck Cemetery is an utter disgrace and disrespectful to those who are buried there.

My family, like many others, are buried on the hill at the back of the church out of sight and it’s quite obviously out of mind, you can’t walk to the graves for the potholes.

Like us, they went to church and gave their money.

Words fail me. What a short memory we have.

Surely these people are entitled to some love and respect?

Bury hatchet with Boycott

From: Charles Allenby, West Close, Swinton, Malton.

I SEE that Richard Hutton has been confirmed as President of Yorkshire County Cricket Club (The Yorkshire Post, April 8).

How ironic that this is the same Richard Hutton who tried his utmost to prevent Geoffrey Boycott from becoming President a few years ago.

Mr Hutton has made no secret of his intense dislike of Mr Boycott.

Time has moved on, and, therefore, Mr Hutton should let bygones be bygones and stop all this childish nonsense.

It is to be hoped that before appointing him the Yorkshire committee received an assurance from Mr Hutton that he will treat Mr Boycott exactly the same way as any other former Yorkshire player – fairly and with the respect his fine playing and commentating career deserves.

Dialect not always same

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

THERE is quite a difference between the dialect of the three Ridings and this becomes obvious when I read your Saturday magazine (The Yorkshire Post, April 8).

I am an East Yorkshire man who lived in North Yorkshire for some time and have now come home. Burler, dub and lunt mean nothing to me. A puddle we called a slaphole. A flame, torch or light would be a leet.