'Why we must fight for our precious NHS' - Your letters plus a 1975 Picture from the Past

Let’s fight for precious NHS

​A recent emergency visit to A&E reminded me.

I was watching the overworked and underpaid staff.

Not long ago we all joined to clap our hands outside our homes on a Thursday evening for the nurses .

I think they were offered one per cent, and we went back to watching TV on Thursday evenings.

Perhaps we were all taken in by the promise of £350m plus 40 new hospitals plus 150.000 new staff. All lies but we took it in and nothing happened.

The NHS is still in a parlous state. But a light is at the end of the tunnel we are told. Go private (if you have the funds) and be like our close friend the USA. This should, when you see the effects it has in the USA, fill us with dread and a desire to put the NHS where it should be, back up on the vital list of items desperately needing fixing.

No more lies on the side of buses. Not proposing to spend vast sums on a new fleet of nuclear subs and planes as recently announced.

We have a health system that deserves to be looked after and grown.

We have paid for it - let’s guard it.

Roger Cain, Ludlow

​PM’s pubs plan is off this planet

So, our Prime Minister (can't say his name) thinks to get our economy to grow is to allow pubs to stay open longer and to have meals served in outdoor areas.

No, Prime Minister. The answer is to reduce the cost of living. People cannot afford the astronomical price of goods and cannot afford to eat out. Does he not yet realise that the people of this nation are struggling to live and pay their bills? Pubs are closing because of lack of use, because of the price of a everything. Surely common sense says if for instance you put the price of car parking up then people will stop using the car park, which happened in the Dudley Borough.

If prices are reduced and people can afford things then people will buy and therefore business will thrive and prosper, or is that just too simplistic?

All everyone does when prices go upwards is stop buying simply because other essential items have to take priority. So, Mr Prime Minister, come down from the planet you are on and see what life is like on planet earth.

Pete Lowe, Brierley Hill

Former Costa needs action

I wrote to you last in May about the Old Costa Coffee Shop Building in Ludlow (4-5 King Street) and at the time I said I felt that one solution to the problem was the existing building be demolished.

Over the months this feeling has strengthened in me and I would suggest that the building is taken down and a landscaped public area with the Church now visible from King Street be left in its place.

It might seem drastic but the present building would cost hundreds of thousands to repair and millions to transform to a habitable flats scheme.