DESPITE the best efforts of our excellent front-line doctors and nurses, the NHS has become a creaking dinosaur beset with woeful inefficiency and burdensome bureaucracy.
Top-down reform is needed before endless pots of money are thrown at the system.
Staff should be empowered to raise concerns without fear for their jobs.
The NHS needs more leadership and less management.
Endless committee meetings do not achieve much if ownership is not given to tasks and outcomes accounted for.
It may be the case that some in the NHS don’t want reform or improved efficiency as this could impact on their job security.
The hierarchical system of management appears to be promoting a culture of not ‘upsetting the applecart’ with staff at each level protecting those above (whether they want to or not).
The recent Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust case springs to mind.
In short, more leadership, less management and better support for staff working at the coalface.
J Rattue, Astwood Bank
IN RESPONSE to the letter in the Redditch Standard dated from M. Rouse, in which he stated ‘everybody in Church Hill is pleased about the high quality private apartments’ on Church Hill Centre.
Whilst the new development is a vast improvement on the derelict former medical centre, it’s a shame that of zero per cent of it has been turned over for affordable living.
I’m also quite surprised that anyone would choose to speak for the entirety of an electoral ward, never mind someone who only won four years ago by just one vote.
On the future of Redditch Library, I’m concerned to hear the long awaited plans for the library are not to be released until after May.
Changes to the library were mooted some time ago, surely the plans should be in the public sphere in the interest of transparency and clarity.
As someone who has used the excellent facilities at Redditch Library I see a good number of residents using it in various ways.
The services available are far more than lending books, there’s historical searches and archiving work as well as the use of internet and printers etc.
A library is a key part to any vibrant and successful town, as is an outdoor market.
Sadly Redditch has already had its market uprooted and shoe horned in to a cramped corner of the Kingfisher Centre, let’s not allow the same to happen to its library service.
M Tomes
Liberal Democrat candidate for Church Hill
I NOTICE Ian Woodall has been saying that Redditch Labour voted against the Ipsley Meadow Cemetery.
I appreciate Ian is a first time candidate here in Redditch having only fairly recently moved to the town, so allow me to correct him and readers.
Labour in Redditch did not vote against the cemetery, and they didn’t move any motions or amendments to stop or change the plans in any way.
In fact, it was they who first identified the site and they who ordered a drilling machine up there to make sure it was suitable.
They were not alone in celebrating the arrival of the drilling machine, even inviting school children to come and take a look as though it were some great engineering marvel.
But then came the moment of decision, and so they dithered for years to come, leaving the decision for the Conservatives to take.
Unlike them, we Conservatives don’t shy away from making the big calls.
M Rouse,
Conservative candidate for Church Hill
OUR MP’s silence speaks volumes.
First there is going to be a ban, then there is a U-turn, now a semi ban, now no ban at all for LGBTQ+ and transgender conversion therapy.
It is totally shameful how Boris and his cronies are treating the LGBTQ + community by not having a total ban on the archaic practice of conversion therapy.
This outdated, barbaric and non-effective treatment on the LGBTQ + community has been the direct cause of hundreds of thousands of suicides.
Can you imagine the uproar if heterosexuals were forced into conversion therapy to turn them gay?
Stupid, I know!
So why has Rachel McLean our MP here in Redditch not spoken out against this, and called for a total ban instead of just following her party’s line?
I encourage you to write to the MP and demand she challenges this medieval practice and do the right thing and use her voice to get this full ban in place.
J Baker, Brockhill
I READ with interest the letters from Councillors Fleming and Rouse in last week’s letters page (Redditch Standard) in which they trolled out their historic ‘blame the previous council’ rhetoric.
It was only when I looked to the top of the page and noted the date of April 1st that the reality struck home.
I’m sure that the voters of Redditch will not be fooled by the Conservatives’ ‘myths and legends’ when it comes to casting their vote on May 5.
P Berry, Batchley
