Shame on them

Dream on.

When will politicians, both at national and local level, stop using the NHS as a political football? What is required is for all parties to come up with a joint strategy with a plan to fund it over the next 10 years. They must be open in their manifestos that this will require a small tax increase and a full review of NHS efficiency. Once agreed, politicians should leave the dedicated NHS staff to get on with the job, free from political interference. Will this happen? Of course not.

The nonentities who nowadays make up the political elite of all parties know that at some time during their political lives they will be in opposition.

A fully funded, functioning NHS would deprive them of their biggest stick with which to beat an incumbent government. Shame on the lot of them.

P Robb

S20

It’s called democracy

If leaving the EU is such a popular idea, why is Terry Palmer strongly against confirming our support via another referendum?

We had a vote decades ago and voted in. That was that until David Cameron got scared of UKIP, supposedly renegotiated our position and put it to another vote. Who can remember Cameron’s new terms by the way?

Now there are more new terms which are added to daily. Surely this justifies another referendum. Why be scared of it Terry? If the public agrees, it would go your way, but I doubt it and so do you, otherwise you would be advocating it from the rooftops.

Mr Palmer’s recent letter refers yet again to the “unelected EU’’. I’m sure I can recall going along to the polling station on this very matter, He asks, what if we don’t like the outcome of our own sovereign parliamentary elections? Do we keep repeating them.?Yes, that is exactly what we do, especially when circumstances change dramatically as they do on an almost daily basis, as with Brexit negotiations. It’s called democracy.

Mr Palmer asks if we should have had a re-run of the last election. Yes indeed we should and would have too if Theresa May had not come up with the despicable idea of using our hard-earned taxes to bribe the DUP to keep her in a job. That will go down in history as one of the most cynically corrupt acts in politics. Anyone with an ounce of decency would have resigned. The way trends were going, a new election could have been won by the Labour Party, but not by the “Momentum Marxist party” mentioned by Terry Palmer, because this does not exist and he knows that.

Graham

by email

Brexit Bashing

I see that the BBC (Brexit Bashing Corporation) is still at it.

Evidently on the Radio 4 Today programme there were three times as many Remain experts as there were Brexit experts.

On Question Time 60% of the guest speakers were Remain supporters, 31% were Brexit supporters and 9% had changed from Remain to supporting Brexit.

This is following on from the referendum result and the General Election where the Conservatives, Labour and UKIP all campaigned to leave Europe and made up 80% of the vote.

Jeremy Corbyn, of course, has now done an expected U- turn.

J Bunting

Greenhill

Staying on

Sorry about the confusion. David Long is quite correct that I did say I was withdrawing from the role of co-chair of STAG at the start of the year. However, as we are still trying to sort out who will take on this work, I was asked to remain as co-chair for a while.

We have some amazing people in our campaign and it’s to their credit that most of them aren’t power mad, so it takes a bit of persuasion to get them to come forward for a job like this.

Chris Rust

Co-Chair, STAG, Sheffield Tree Action Groups (for the time being).

Irish border

Lots of rhetoric during Brexit negotiations about having to have a ‘hard’ Irish border in place after Brexit.

The British Brexit negotiators tell us it is not necessary, yet Labour’s Corbyn, along with the the EU negotiators, say it is. So yet again it’s the ‘bully boys’ of the EU and, unbelievably the Labour Party, that are now putting the Good Friday agreement at risk - and not the British Brexit negotiators - by insisting that they, the EU, require a hard border. Let the EU and their Republican puppets put one in place then, if they dare.

Terry Palmer

South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley, S74

Don’t get so grumpy, Paul

Paul Weller, 59, still doing his thing and a good thing in my eyes.

However when you have paid a decent amount of dosh to see him, he doesn’t need to swear at the audience and be even more grumpy than usual. Although he’s playing songs that are ok, we are expecting a few more of the hits.

Paul, you have a impressive back catalogue. Be happy that people are still singing A Town Called Malice after all these years, because it’s great. Don’t get a grumpy bum if we are not singing to songs we haven’t heard of.

Jayne Grayson

by email

A proposal

Mr Thorpe, (letters, February 28, re: buses), I am yours. Marry me. XX

Jane Wilford

Woodseats S8

Grand-dad not grandad

I was disappointed to see on the front page of today’s, (February 27) Star the misspelling of “granddad”.

I never see “granma” or “granson” or grandaughter” or even “granfather”. I think it’s a reflection of changed practices in teaching English in schools which has resulted in no longer using hyphens.

Using hyphens would indicate that “grand” indicates a difference of generation so by setting out the word as “grand-dad” as a colloquial version of “grand-father” then it would always be spelled correctly.

Ian Cosford

by email