Flood issues were ignored

I AM angry about the Connect 2 cycle way – I was a member of the Lower Bullingham parish council when this project was first underway and I said all those months back: “What about flooding?” – only to be told that it would never be an issue or problem.

How wrong that was, yet again, and we are now entrusting the council to approve however many new homes adjacent to Watery Lane. It beggars belief. I have never known such a useless council for making decisions – as for the potholes, don’t get me started.

It managed to plane out the one side over the new bridge but left the other side – how ludicrous.

It had the machinery, why not take it across the road and do the other side?

I resigned from the parish council as it had no voice, was not listened to in any way, shape or form on any matters relating to members and our parishioners’ welfare in Lower Bullingham or the rest of Hereford for that matter.

These floods just go to show what can and certainly does happen.

Herefordshire Council get a grip.

SIAN WILLIAMS Warwick Road Lower Bullingham Hereford

Future is perilous

AS a former consultant physician who worked at the County Hospital for 25 years, I write to support the important letter from Dr Waters and his colleagues (Readers’ Times , February 6), and also because I believe that the future of Herefordshire’s health services is probably even more perilous than they suggest.

Privatisation of services in the NHS is not necessarily harmful, and indeed GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists have all acted as private contractors to provide excellent NHS services since its foundation in 1948.

However, those contracts were all negotiated on a national basis as part of a national health service.

More recently some contracts have been negotiated on a local basis and this will increasingly become the norm.

As politicians are fond of telling us, local negotiations can result in contracts suited to meet the needs of local populations; but this is true only if the commissioners of services are able to negotiate from a position of strength.

However, our local service commissioners are in an exceptionally weak negotiating position. There are three reasons for this. The most important is the disastrous Private Finance Initiative (PFI) which funded the new building at the County Hospital. PFI has been a flagship policy of both main political parties and, as the development of Hereford Hospital was one of the first wave PFI projects which the government of the time was desperate to promote. The PFI fiasco has compounded the two inherent disadvantages faced by Herefordshire.

These are our small size which means that we cannot achieve the same economies of scale which apply in larger organisations, and the additional cost of providing community health services to our widely dispersed rural population.

In the circumstances it is a great credit to both commissioners and providers of healthcare that our services have remained as effective as they are; but, because the commissioners of healthcare in Herefordshire must now negotiate from an effectively bankrupt position, they will be placed under intense political pressures to accept the cheapest quotes, irrespective of whether these provide services comparable to those which we have at present.

We will of course be told that “safeguards are in place”, and we can all predict that those so-called safeguards will turn out to be riddled with loopholes.

Dr Waters and his colleagues advocate changes to reverse the recent legislation, but I do not think that this is realistic.

Governments rarely accept that they are wrong, certainly not so soon after the event, and in this instance the government will say that its new legislation must be given time to prove its worth. The best we can hope for are adjustments to the rules to make it affordable for us to maintain a reasonable standard of health care in Herefordshire.

Our MPs, and Mr Norman in particular, have already tried to mitigate the ill- effects of our PFI contract as well as our other disadvantages, but in the present circumstances they have virtually no political clout.

Circumstances may change but probably not in time to save our services from serious harm, unless the people of Herefordshire can generate a massive groundswell of opinion that forces recognition of our particular circumstances.

Perhaps the Hereford Times could spearhead SHHS – Save Hereford’s Health Service.

HENRY CONNOR Vineyard Road Hereford

Can Labour deliver?

I WOULD like to thank Herefordshire GPs for pointing out that the National Health Service has been effectively abolished. In the future healthcare may no longer be free at the point of need. I have paid NI and PAYE for 45 years and I’m still working and paying. Will the government repay my contributions so that I can buy private healthcare insurance for my old age? The coalition government has convinced people that there is no money available for public services but it has succeeded in redistributing wealth from poorer people to richer people by selling off public assets and services. In 2015 we must vote to establish a government with sufficient wisdom and foresight to re-establish and direct public services in an efficient and cost effective way for the benefit of everyone; a government which will ensure that “the NHS is safe in our hands”.

The Labour party used to be the party for all working people – can it meet the challenge?

JANETTE WARD MICHAEL Tarrington Hereford

Fight to keep our NHS

HOW appalling it is that some of our exceptional general practitioners have, in desperation, to appeal for our help to prevent our NHS being sold off to private bidders.

The Blair government persuaded us to believe that low income tax was the mark of a prudent government. This is not true when the burden is merely shifted to indirect taxation.

Indirect taxation has never been so high, thanks not only to VAT but also to the ceaseless removal of customary subsidies from local government, housing, transport, schools and now our National Health Service. Can we never hope for an honest government which asks: ‘Do you want good roads and flood defences? That will be an extra pound on your income tax. You want a National Health Service?

That will cost you £2.50.’ I grew up in a GP’s household, whose doctor, after four years on the Western Front, served a sub-county in Devon for 40 years. He held surgeries, drove 60 miles a day visiting remote farmsteads and delivered babies, even on Christmas Day. His ‘private’ patients were charged modestly, his ‘panel’ patients were paid for by their insurers. The other 50 per cent were sent bills which many did not pay, but he would still visit them next time. But many sick people never saw a doctor at all (except in the Workhouse) because they knew they couldn’t afford to. Do we want to go back there again?

It is too easy for a government to reduce grants while raising the hurdles.

In that way the most profitable areas can be sold off when the NHS Trust goes bankrupt, to the pleasure (we are told) of tax-payers and of entrepreneurs. But wait until the bills come in.

You may spend more on your healthcare than on your mortgage, as many do in the USA. We are so fortunate to have an NHS. Let’s fight to keep it, even if it costs our government our money.

LANCE MARSHALL Whitecross Road, Hereford

Power is too concentrated

IF the disaster on the Somerset Levels tells us anything, it is that rebalancing the economy is not just about rebuilding industry in this country, it is equally about reducing the adverse effect that London has on the rest of the UK. Villages, towns and cities offer so much to our economy, but are stifled by a lack of investment, while London sucks up billion after billion for roads, railways and airports that bring ever greater congestion, and ever higher property prices to the very people that complain about both. Just as the BBC has relocated a large part of its operation to Manchester, so must the government relocate whole departments to Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff or Newcastle. A flooded Somerset in 2014 is a splendid example of just what happens when power is concentrated in one place. Spending £30 million on developing wetlands for birds and animals, was seen by the Environment Agency as being more important than spending £4 million on dredging rivers that would have alleviated the problems that have befallen Somerset.

If there were any justice at this time, Lord Smith and other senior members of the Environment Agency should be made to live on the Somerset Levels until the waters recede, but I somehow doubt that local people would want them there.

GRAHAM CARPENTER Oldfields Close, Leominster

Industry site plan concern

AT present planning applications for two major industrial sites to house chickens are being processed by Herefordshire Council. One is at Knapton Green, the other at Penrhos near Kington. Issues with local residents will arise as with this type of application at any time but each seemingly will be decided under planning rules currently in place. It is a very fine line deciding on matters such as landscape, odour, noise, lighting, traffic generation and all the other issues this type of development brings with it.

At present each landowner who decides to move into factory farming assumes that this is an agricultural activity and therefore any potential impact on their neighbours is not relevant.

Cargill announced recently that it is investing to upgrade its factory in Hereford and presumably this will create the need for more broiler units. Today’s norm for each site seems to be the equivalent to the proposed new Sainsbury’s store in Leominster so the location of them is quite critical if they are to be accommodated within the landscape of tranquil and rural Herefordshire without too much effect on the neighbours.

Perhaps it is time for Herefordshire Council to recognise that this is a major issue that needs addressing county-wide and draw up some real guidelines for applicants that clearly establish what is and is not acceptable should they wish to impose these industrial complexes within the current environment of Herefordshire.

The Environment Agency has guidelines about the siting of these units with regard to odour, and perhaps that could be a clear start for the council to use and adopt on one of the main objections.

I am under no illusion how important Cargills is to the economy within the county but perhaps it also should consider whether it has a corporate responsibility to assist in arriving at a managed solution to the issues raised by their strategic actions.

TONY BROMLEY Bush Bank Hereford

Learners all deserve more

I WAS interested to read the letter about Hereford Sixth Form College’s A-Level results (Readers’ Times, February 13). There is a little more to the story than Dr Godfrey, the principal, stated.

Hereford Sixth Form College regularly features in the top-five non-selective state-funded colleges in the country – a notable achievement in itself. This is against a background of savage funding cuts since the coalition government came to power. The 93 sixth form colleges in the country educate some 150,000 students aged 16-19 very successfully.

Their combined funding has been reduced by around £100 million, a little over £1 million per college on average.

Meanwhile, “free” schools educate around 1,600 children and have had funding of about £62 million so far.

In this case, “free” means that we all pay through taxes for this ideological project.

Surely it would be better, and more cost-efficient, to spend our tax revenue on institutions that we know work, and work well. Dr Godfrey, his staff and students, deserve better.

CHRIS BIVAND Eardisland Leominster

Technology not too scary

I’VE just seen Leslie Moffat’s letter “PC helps me keep in touch”

(Readers’ Times, February 6). I too have found a new world in my 80s – I bought an iPad so that I can keep in touch with my family and friends in California. As Leslie said, it was terrifying at first, but it kept me sane when I was in hospital.

However, at times, I could throw it through the window when it plays up. I love it when I get amusing emails and I send them on to friends.

I’m also able to see more of my lovely grandchildren. If only our broadband was better in the county.

ELAINE WHITE Woodfield Gardens, Belmont, Hereford

Supermarket a ‘no brainer’

I, TOO, was disappointed with the planning news refusing the Sainsbury’s development in Mill street.

The “NO” campaign was well organised, masterminded by a number of local people, many of whom have worked tirelessly for years for the improvement of the town.

I don’t doubt their integrity for one moment; I just don’t share their conclusions. I am not convinced that the presence of Sainsbury’s supermarket will cause “the sky to fall in” on Leominster.

If “supermarkets kill towns”, why hasn’t Leominster been killed off by three major supermarket chains and a dozen or more street-corner mini- markets? A few years ago the prophets of doom told us that a “Focus Store” in Mill Street would spell the end of hardware shops in the town – we still have at least four trading successfully. The one retailer likely to be most affected by the Sainsbury’s development is Morrison’s; would a little more competition there be such a bad thing?

Sure, there are serious issues around the way supermarkets trade, their stranglehold on the supply chain in particular. But are busy, working adults, with families to shop for, going to dash out in their lunchtimes to trudge the streets, with heavy shopping baskets, in all weathers? Or are they going to shop after work, under one roof in the warm and the dry with a trolley to take it to the car?

It is, as they say, “a no brainer.”

The increase of traffic in Mill Street is a valid point; would that the energy expended on the NO campaign been used to work for the much needed east-west link road. Not only would that reduce the volume of traffic on the rail crossing and through Mill Street massively, it might also improve the quality of life for dozens of people living in the Bargates.

C E EMBREY Godiva Road Leominster

Ditches must be well kept

WAS there not a time when farmers annually maintained ditches around their fields and ploughed with the contours of those fields in order to ensure that surface water eventually found its way into streams and rivers?

EU subsidies, I suspect, have encouraged farmers to extract the very maximum from their land resulting in those ditches being ploughed in to gain the most out of the acreage.

Likewise, ploughing against the contours, up and down, has ensured that, in heavy weather, much of the topsoil is washed away and what used to flow into the ditches now flows along the roads and results in flooding.

I have no wish to exacerbate the farmers’ deplorable and desperate current situation, but shouldn’t Defra, together with the NFU, jointly take some of the blame for the present vulnerable state of our farmland? As I understand it, Defra is responsible for establishing and co-ordinating farming policy and cannot stand back while the Environment Agency and the government take all the brickbats.

ANTHEA WATSON Fownhope Hereford

Bottle charge to stop mess

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with Martin Field’s sentiments (Readers’ Times, January 23) highlighting the perennial problem of roadside rubbish. As an almost daily cyclist covering the same eight-mile stretches of road either side of Hay, I can vouch for its seriousness. Since 2003 I’ve been picking up discarded plastic and tin intermittently, simply because I hate seeing the stuff day after day. During January for instance, I picked up 37 plastic bottles and 22 drink cans, but there will be plenty more in the weeks to come.

And whilst I agree we should all be prepared to pick up other people’s litter from time to time, that, to me, is normal community- spirited behaviour and the very least we should do.

I would like to suggest two more things.

Try to convince the big drinks manufacturers and supermarket chains of their contribution to the problem and maybe, like the old tuppenny deposit on glass bottles of yesteryear, get them to surcharge each plastic bottle and drinks can, to be redeemed at supermarket recycling points.

That would certainly encourage fundraisers and people like me.

If, at the same time, a few shock billboards were to be seen on the stretches of road favoured by the “litterati” it would at least demonstrate people’s opposition to their random disposal of rubbish and remind them they are breaking the law, even if it is a poorlyenforced one.

TOM GODDARD St Mary’s Road Hay on Wye Hereford