YP Letters: Savings must go to protect troubled NHS

WITH the NHS almost at the point of collapse, due to severe financial losses, I find it appalling that one of the previous premier David Cameron’s past schemes, the Troubled Families project, has squandered around £900m supposedly helping around 120,000 households in alleviating unemployment, truancy and a myriad of social problems (Jayne Dowle, The Yorkshire Post, October 20), with only a fraction of the 120,000 households experiencing any improvement in their life chances at all.

Such monumental waste arising from Cameron’s vanity should never have been expended on such folly. Instead the money should have been diverted to the hard pressed NHS to improve the lives of the majority.

Similarly, Theresa May should implement EU withdrawal quickly, thereby enabling the alleged £340m saved weekly from the EU to be spent on the NHS. Or was this figure merely plucked out of the air by those campaigning to leave the EU in the June referendum? Savings will however be made when we leave the EU and should therefore be diverted to the NHS, and sooner rather than later.

Other large scale expenditure on vain pet projects, like HS2, should be scaled back, with money saved diverted to regenerating Britain’s manufacturing industry as this would benefit the many rather than the few.

British workers, especially the young, would be able to work in skilled employment in industries such as chemicals, steel and the production of both white goods and high technology products, thereby reducing the billions spent on the importation of these products.

From: Talat Khan OBE, Hillhouse, Huddersfield.

I UNDERSTAND that it has been decided that the A&E department of the Huddersfield Royal Infirmary will be closed and transferred to Halifax’s Calderdale Royal Hospital.

It appears the NHS want us all to contact NHS 24 on Freephone 111 for medical advice.

Maybe this will be the norm for the rest of the country one day in the future. I think the Government want us all to self-treat and leave us to our own devices.

From: George Marsden, Colton, Leeds.

TALKING to an American lady who was visiting this country, she told me she had broken her ankle while staying in Edinburgh and had excellent hospital treatment within an hour – and it was free. She said she’d had her credit card ready,but didn’t need it. This wouldn’t have happened in the States.

“No wonder your NHS is in a sorry state,” she added. “Why are you not billing foreign visitors? Is it because you’re afraid to ask for money?”

The nursing staff should not be the ones to issue an account; we should have a designated member of staff on whom they could call to do the administration.

How many millions could we be clawing back from these visitors who are willing to pay?

Questionable evidence

From: John Cole, Oakroyd Terrace, Baildon, Shipley.

FROM time to time, the High Court quashes a criminal conviction on the grounds that it is “unsafe”. This might be because new evidence has emerged, or that existing evidence that helped secure the conviction has proved to be flawed.

I think there is a parallel here with the referendum vote on June 23. It has subsequently emerged that some of the persuasive “evidence” (e.g. that Turkey was about to join the EU and hence millions of Turks were soon to arrive in the UK) was totally false.

Similarly new evidence is emerging that Brexit will prove economically disadvantageous.

The slide in the exchange rate of sterling (making us all poorer) is just one example. Nissan’s hesitation to invest in its Sunderland car making plant is another

Theresa May’s government is over-interpreting the narrow 52/48 split and is heading for a hard Brexit that most people do not want, and did not vote for.

The Commons and the Lords together constitute the High Court of Parliament.

Parliament should use its natural authority to overturn the clearly “unsafe” referendum result and institute a period of careful re-thinking.

Words to prosper by

From: Peter Hyde, Driffield.

MANY years ago, I was told that these words of wisdom should be heeded by any government.

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

What one person receives without working, another person works for without receiving.

The Government cannot give to somebody without first taking it from somebody else.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

When half of the population get the idea that they don’t have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work, because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end for any nation.

Defiance of democracy

From: Hilary Andrews, Nursery Lane, Leeds.

SO Donald Trump will refuse to accept the verdict of the American vote unless he is made President (The Yorkshire Post, October 21).

What is the phenomenon that has taken over the world where unpopular results of democratic voting has become a reason to reject the result?

Will this same phenomenon start to affect football matches soon?