In the 1970’s I worked for a local authority (not York) who owned the majority of care homes in the area. As places arose they were offered to clients on the basis of need. When the waiting list became colossal, the authority opened another home. When a need for specialised dementia care became clear, a purpose-built home was constructed. Need was monitored and met.
Today private organisations offer skilled and caring accommodation, but these homes are opened according to the owners’ designs, not the community’s needs. It seems now that the only need a local authority can meet is financial support. Invaluable as this is, people need an assurance that someone is looking out for them and actively making provision.
Have we have gone too far down the road of market forces? Local councils are best placed to know what a community needs.
The rights and the resources should be available again to those who can tackle the grassroots of need.
Sylvia Bunting
Stratford Way,
Huntington,
York
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Water companies are taking the public for fools
WATER companies continue to take the public for fools, paying huge undeserved bonuses to failing executives, borrowing to fund dividend payments, slipping monthly ever further into debt. All this whilst its customers suffer a daily deterioration of service, plus an increase in bills.
Also, of those MPs appointed to Labour’s cabinet, the least qualified for the position to which he has been allotted has to be Ed Miliband. No scientific experience but given the authority to determine our future energy policy, his decisions based solely on impractical warped ideological opinions, today’s King Canute, achieving nothing than huge unnecessary cost to the taxpayer.
Peter Rickaby,
West Park,
Selby
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Cut back aid to India
WHY oh why are we giving nearly two and a half billion pounds a year to India in foreign aid when they obviously don’t need it? They are a nuclear power and they have their own space program and even worse. They are now in bed with Putin who is evil personified. It’s time to cut the aid package completely.
M Horsman,
Moorland Road,
York
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JP 4 VP
IN the unlikely event of President Biden stepping down due to ill health, I think first of all he should be thanked for his years of service as President and Vice President. If he went, he would be leaving the USA in a much better condition than when he became President.
If Kamala Harris is inaugurated as President – in the next few days – her first choice has to be one of VP. I personally would favour former Congressman Joseph Patrick Kennedy III.
He is young enough to make Senator Vance look old and he plainly could be more of a Dick Cheney type VP rather than a J. Danforth Quayle type VP, if you will pardon the analogy. JP 4 VP has a certain ring to it.
Nigel Boddy,
Witney Court,
Greencroft Close,
Darlington
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