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Limited capacity

SEVERAL recent correspondents have expressed well-founded concerns about the way our local health facilities will cope with Eastern Villages, Wichelstowe, Wroughton, Tadpole Farm, Blunsdon, etc, etc.

While I love GWH, recent events have made me understand how limited their capacity is to cope with even the present 250,000 catchment.

And I have discovered I am not alone. Blunsdon parish councillor Mike Compton has got a reply to the question, ‘what healthcare plans exist to support this ever expanding population in Swindon?’

Encouragingly, the spokesman for the Community Commissioning Team Nikki Mullin says additional capacity ‘may be required’.

She writes: “In respect of the new housing developments the NHS is currently developing a five-year plan for the future of services which includes consideration of increased population from the new housing development programmes.

“Whilst recognising additional capacity for services may be required, this may not be delivered through an increase in acute hospital beds as we are considering other models of care, such as working with the independent care home sector to purchase blocks of beds that could be staffed by specialist hospital staff, but mean people receive elements of their care in their local community.

“Additional community-based services that can treat people within their own homes and the development of health campuses serving a neighbourhood that will be used to provide a huge range of services including primary care, consultant out-patient, community and voluntary sector services.

“The new Swindon Health Centre in the middle of town will be the first of these facilities.”

No word about funding of course. Nikki, further states they are also ‘developing engagement material’.

Well, Nikki once you have developed it, put me down. I’d like to ‘be engaged’.

Instead of us going to GWH, it seems the idea is they come to us?

Call me an old cynic but I suppose if nothing else, it will help the parking.

JOHN STOOKE

Haydon End

Swindon

....

Remain... here’s why

I WOULD disassociate myself from many arguments for staying in the EU put forward by the ‘Remain’ campaign, and I find some of the utterances by David Cameron and his cronies in support of this, complete nonsense.

Indeed, there is much wrong with the EU, the waste, the bureaucracy etc, that I would not attempt to defend.

Nevertheless, I am campaigning for the UK to remain in the EU for the following reasons:

1. For the last 60 years the EU has played a part in preventing the major European powers fighting each other, something that they had been doing for hundreds of years previously.

2. As an internationalist, I instinctively favour greater co-operation between nations and the breaking down of national barriers.

3. As an active trade unionist all my working life, I have seen the great benefits that European legislation has brought to British workers.

4.Whatever the various motives of people voting to leave are, the fact is that a successful leave vote will be widely seen as a massive victory for right wing politics, led by UKIP and the less savoury elements of the Tory Party.

And this comes at a time when there is a worrying increase in support for the far right in other European countries.

Socialists such as myself and, I would hope, Liberals and more moderate Tories, simply cannot allow such a right wing victory to occur.

BOB CRETCHLEY

Parham Walk, Swindon

....

One PM, two views

TO VOTE ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ is probably one of the most important decisions the British people will be asked to undertake for many years.

The choice in the referendum is complicated by the abject lies which spew forth from both sides of the debate and the scaremongering tactics, lacking in fact but based on supposition and alleged intellectual thought which are being used to suggest this great nation is incapable of surviving outside of the supposed maternal embrace of the EU.

Only a few months ago a well-known politician said: “There is no question that Britain could survive and do well outside the EU.”

Less than 24 hours ago a leading political figure said a vote to leave the EU ‘would be voting to self destruct’.

In other words there are two clear arguments to consider – can we survive and prosper outside the EU or is our only hope of survival and prosperity to be found inside the EU?

My dilemma is that the two statements, which are opposed to each other were uttered by the same politician – David Cameron.

Having had an Eton education and attended Oxford University it has to be acknowledged the Prime Minister is a lot cleverer than me (Sanford Street Secondary Modern and Swindon College) but what should we make of his capacity to articulate two different views in a short time?

If Mr Cameron is so convinced leaving the EU is so wrong, one is entitled to ask, ‘why offer the people a referendum?’

In the answer we learn all we need to know about Mr Cameron and politicians in general. They will say and do pretty much anything to ensure their political survival.

A referendum was the price he paid to make sure the Conservatives didn’t lose the 2015 election – his sham negotiations with EU members was the window dressing exercise to demonstrate he was ‘battling for Britain’ – in truth he was merely confirming politicians’ capacity to always do whatever is best in the cause of self interest.

DES MORGAN

Caraway Drive, Swindon

....

EU is democratic

CAN we put to rest once and for all the falsehood that the EU in undemocratic?

The EU is actually more democratic than the UK. It has one directly elected legislature chamber (the European Parliament), one indirectly elected legislature chamber (the Council of Ministers) and an executive made up of appointments by democratically elected governments (the European Commission), which is directly answerable to the European Parliament.

The reason the Commission is made up from nominated representatives rather than directly elected members is to strike the balance between the will of nation states and the will of the collective whole.

This means that a country, no matter how big or small, will always have a voice when it comes to decisions that affect everyone.

This compares with the UK were we have one elected legislature chamber (House of Commons, where a party with 35 per cent of the vote can get a majority), an unelected legislature chamber (the House of Lords, with more than 800 appointed members) and an appointed executive (Cabinet and ministers).

In the EU, no one political party or country holds a majority of seats in any of the three key bodies so they need to talk with each other and come up with policies and solutions that can be supported by a majority of MEPs, ministers and members of the Commission.

In the UK a party that has support of just over a third of voters can force laws and policies through both chambers regardless of public opinion.

ALEX HEGENBARTH

Head of Britain Stronger In Europe

Swindon

....

Tory power struggle

WITH all the rhetoric generated by the EU Referendum it is easy to lose sight of the basic facts.

Nigel Farage can’t name one serious economic organisation that believes the UK would be better off if we left the EU.

That’s because economic experts from the Bank of England and the IMF to the OECD all say we’re better off in Europe.

The whole EU Referendum has been triggered by a Tory party civil war which has rumbled on for decades.

This struggle is not actually about British sovereignty and definitely not about what is best for the British people.

It is a frequently squalid struggle for control of the Tory Party, with opportunists using the issue to attack and weaken the Prime Minister and his allies.

These Euro-phobic Tories are in a minority. The only other political parties to support them are the BNP and UKIP.

Every other major party wants Britain to stay in.

The level of actual support in the country for such policies was shown in the last General Election.

Prior to the election UKIP had two MPs. Nigel Farage predicted they would win up to 40 seats. They actually lost one of their two seats.

AP MILROY

Bellefield Crescent

Trowbridge

....

They didn’t help me

HAVING had experience with the mental health sector due to a family member suffering from dementia, I found that there was no support at any time.

I had contact with them on several occasions but I was fobbed of, with ‘we can’t do anything’.

They would only assess every six months after I contacted them, and each time they disregarded any thing I voiced, but listened to my family member who said she was fine.

But I was the one who received up to 50 phone calls a day because she had forgotten she had rung.

I sat there for hours while she cried because she was depressed.

I spent hours trying to convince her that there was no-one else in her house, even though she was seeing people.

She would forget to eat, saying she had eaten; she would not wash saying she had already washed; she would not clean saying she had already cleaned.

And would get very distressed if you questioned her.

All the time mental health believed what my family member said and dismissed any of my concerns, thus we struggled on without their help until the family member died, afraid and confused.

No, they were no help to me.

LORRAINE COLEMAN

Waverley Road

Swindon