It’s a black fly
WITH regards to your headline story ‘memory wiped by fly bite’ (May 18), I must correct the factual inaccuracy that the fly transmitted Herpes viral encephalitis to the individual who has clearly had a catastrophic outcome of the infection. 
Having seen several cases of the same condition, I can only extend my heartfelt sympathies to the family. 
However, to allay the general public’s concerns over ‘Blandford’ fly bites, these are merely the common black fly, the ‘Blandford’ prefix came about after an epidemic in the 1960s when stagnant water around Blandford Forum in Dorset caused a significant number of people to be bitten. 
Apart from irritation of the bite site no other illness ensued.
There has never been any evidence that the black fly transmits any virus to humans (although it is known to transmit parasites to cattle). 
Herpes, all strains, are common in humans and person-to-person spread is the likely mode of transmission or loss of personal immunity as many of us harbour the virus in our bodies. 
On extremely rare occasions it may be possible for it to have transmitted from Macaque monkeys who share a very similar genetic makeup to ourselves but this is as far as ‘vector’ transmission goes. 
I think it is important not to cause fear in the general public particularly at this time of year when the black fly is actively ‘feasting’ on us for a disease it cannot cause.
DR ROBERT EVERED 
Consultant in Occupational Medicine
Kingsland

Off the radar
CLIFFORD in West Herefordshire appears to have fallen off the radar screen as far as Herefordshire Council is concerned.  
We have very inadequate traffic control signs, one 30 mph sign at each end of the village which very few take any notice of.  
We have a road surface which resembles more of a dried river bed and, as far as the election is concerned, there has only been one leaflet through the letter box.  
The Hay-on-Wye Festival is now under way with a huge increase in traffic, this resulted last year in a near fatal car accident caused by speeding.  
The toll bridge kindly donates free crossing on one or two days, thus causing yet more traffic to enter Hay via Clifford.
We have 12 children living along the main road through Clifford, and that does not include visiting grandchildren, there are dogs and three working farms, thus heavy farm traffic.
I am not suggesting Herefordshire Council waste money on fancy village signs (as in Winforton, Whitney on Wye and Eardisley), but we could do with better speed restrictions and a new road surface.
JULIA HOPTON
Clifford

Put them back
THE Tenbury Library local history collection has recently been reduced by more than half. 
This unique and valuable resource is freely available to Tenburians and to local historians who visit from far and wide. 
Tunstall Evans’ “History of Tenbury” and memoirs by local people have been removed from the shelves, as have many other interesting volumes. 
Much of the removed material is not available elsewhere, nor is it accessible on the internet. 
I appeal to Advertiser readers to lobby the Worcestershire County Council Library Service to return the removed books. They are our local heritage and contribute to local life and culture.
STEPHANIE MOCROFT
Tenbury Wells

Spending now
UNLIKE France, where a new centrist party has blown away many of the old allegiances to left or right, the UK appears to be largely under the influence of traditional Labour or Conservative voting patterns.
However, I would like to ask voters to consider the following, regardless of their political leanings in past elections.
Education is suffering greatly through underfunding - we have overworked teachers, whose pay has been cut in real terms, and reduced funding for most individual schools. What sense does it make to promise to spend £500 million on new grammar schools (for at most 25% of children), and £320 million on new free schools (encouraging segregation, when in N Ireland they are desperately trying to bring harmony by educating all children together), when all schools and all children deserve to be better supported?
Those who would profit most from a new batch of grammar schools would be the middle classes who at present send their children to private schools, and who would thus no longer have fees to pay.
Universities are suffering already from the restrictions on immigration. There are fewer overseas students, seriously reducing a university’s income, and fewer overseas postgraduates and researchers, meaning, amongst other things, that the UK will fall behind in all areas, especially technology and medicine.
If a cap is to be set on the numbers of immigrants (Theresa May, as one of our longest serving Home Secretaries, failed to achieve this), it makes no sense to include the revenue-providing foreign students.
Promising more money for the NHS by 2020 is not a solution. 
Money is needed now, requiring perhaps an immediate increase in income tax. 
As in education, because of overwork, many doctors and nurses are leaving the profession for which they have been expensively trained, because of pressures aggravated by covering for vacancies that haven’t been filled. 
At a time like this, where is the sense in removing bursaries for students who want to train for a health profession? Or in imposing seven-day coverage in hospitals (in fact it already exists), when doctors are at present working 70 to 80 hour weeks?
Austerity cuts (wasn’t it the banks that set off this financial crisis? Are senior bank officials also subject to austerity cuts?) are building up an expensive future. 
Either we will have to accept desperately bad roads, or most rural roads will need complete rebuilding, at a much greater cost than decent maintenance now. In other spheres, such as social care (where Child Protection has just been privatised!) and health, we will see increasing privatisation, and a consequent reduction in accountability and an increase in costs to us, the ‘consumers’.
Like the main political parties, I haven’t even mentioned the environment, where solar panels on all new builds would be an easy start.
There are no easy answers, but we need a government prepared to spend money NOW, with an eye to avoiding greater expense in the future.
GUY WHITMARSH
Richards Castle

Apathy rules?
There appears to be an election coming up in a couple of weeks, but as far as Herefordshire is concerned there is no sight nor sound of an election. 
I have seen no election posters, leaflets, flyers or anything. 
Except the one I’ve just put in my window. 
I have seen one set of statements from South Herefordshire from the candidates in your paper, with promises of statements for North Herefordshire next week.
Where is the local debate? 
Where are the candidates? 
Does anyone care?  
Is anyone going along to meetings to hear what candidates have to say? 
Or is it assumed that Herefordshire seats are such safe Tory seats that no one can be bothered?
Especially, this is a cri de coeur to the younger people, get out there, find out what the issues are, make up your own mind and vote. 
It is your future that is at stake.
Apathy Rules UK.
KENNETH WILLIAMS
East St
Pembridge

Blame game
IT’S so easy to complain about your MP on Facebook, so easy to slag him off.  
I wonder how many of his critics have ever made an appointment to talk to him face to face. 
He has a Friday surgery and makes himself accessible to all.
I wrote a letter to the Hereford Times in 2009 entitled “You get the leadership you deserve”.
My focus was on local governance then, and still is, but my sentiments are just as pertinent for the General Election on June 8.
I hear so often from people “I don’t vote, it’s a waste of time”.
Yet those sort of people are often the most vociferous of complainers about government policies.  
Nowt as queer as folk!
Then there are the others, like you and me, who do vote. 
When we do so it is usually for a colour, for a Party rather than a person but after the election and the winning party is in place, so often it is the person who is the one who gets the short end of the stick when things go wrong or things don’t pan out as we feel it should.
Is that really a credible reaction?
CHARLES NICHOLLS
Fayre Oaks Home Park
Hereford

Tax breaks
 I WOULD like to ask Jesse Norman, are you going to campaign on the Tory manifesto to give a tax break of £1000 pa to those on £50k pa, double the average wage, while only giving those on the minimum wage a tax break of just £200 pa?
 How is this helping the “just about managing”?
 Typical old Tories, rob from the poor to give to the rich.
David George
Hereford

Military unity
I THINK it of utmost importance at this critical time in British history to ask Jesse Norman, via the Hereford Times, if he is aware that the Tory party has committed the UK to full EU military unification that will absorb the British military lock, stock and barrel, including the associated budget and command structure that goes with it, despite denials made by Michael Fallon and others?
The Tories have been responsible for the systematic dismantling of the British military by cutting off the money supply in readiness for its absorption in to the EU. 
So, no shortage of money but instead it has gone to the EU.
This of course renders any pretence that Theresa May is negotiating any form of Brexit as a disingenuous lie and one of the reasons why a snap general election has been called because the Tories are terrified of this information leaking out in to the public domain and the public’s reaction to it at the ballot box locally and nationally if the truth was known.
I would appreciate Mr Norman’s thoughts on this.
Paul Carpenter
Bartestree

Swing to right
I CAN’T remember any other election that has felt so much like a struggle for the heart and soul of the nation. 
Not even Major’s “party of sleaze” was this populated by cheats and liars and we now know that a vote for the Conservative party is a vote for animal cruelty, too.
Whatever your reservations about Corbyn, and even if you usually vote Conservative, I would urge you not to do so this time. Even in the last two years since the Conservatives got a clear majority, we’ve seen an acceleration of the dismantling of Attlee’s post war reforms. 
If they are returned for another five years, they will finish the job and destroy everything that makes society decent and that my grandfather and others fought for.
The pendulum has swung to the right and it will go on swinging until it becomes a death knell for fairness, justice, opportunity and compassion. 
They must be stopped.
AMANDA MARTIN
Putson
Hereford 

Time to act
REGARDING the list of 3000+ terror suspects, I totally agree with the comments made by ex-Cobra chief Colonel Kemp.
We should be deporting non-British suspects NOW.
We should be interning British ones NOW.
It is time to stop pussyfooting around with words of condemnation and act now.
Let’s use the ‘Foreign Aid’ budget to fund extra police to carry out this task 
STU HILL
Madley

Great market
I WISH to bring to your readers’ attention the success of Hereford Livestock Market. 
Since its recent move out of the city this market has gone from strength to strength. 
Despite opposition from many quarters, the decision was made to push on and build the market when other markets were on a downward trend. 
I remember the planning committee meeting when some councillors tried very hard to say that there was no need for a livestock market in Hereford because in the modern age of farming it was very easy to trade online. 
The importance of the market is plain to see as it is fast becoming the busiest and, dare I say it, the best for miles around. 
There was an astounding 9,659 sheep, as well as many cattle, in the market on Wednesday last (24 May), and to quote one of the auctioneers: “a blistering trade with the vendors happy,the auctioneers happy and the buyers happy”! 
Vendors and buyers alike are travelling many miles to trade in Hereford and I want to congratulate Hereford Market Auctioneers and all staff on the service they provide, and long may it continue.
Dave Greenow
Dinedor