Wirral News letters: March 9

Mar 9 2011 Birkenhead News

Disgusted with cuts

I’M NOT naive enough to realise that cuts will not hit everyone, but I thought that David Cameron’s so called Big Society could do more to protect the most vulnerable members of our community, such as the sick and elderly.

Yet another result of the much trumpeted council balancing its budgets and freezing council tax has emerged this week.

My mum, who is 89, has been very mobile over the years and an active volunteer for the Hospital League of Friends right up to two years ago when she was diagnosed with cancer and osteoporosis.

She has never claimed any benefits and is quite self-sufficient, but was becoming increasingly isolated until she was fortunate enough to get a place at the Lonsdale Trust Day Centre in Wallasey.

This wonderful place has given her a new lease of life. She has made new friends, felt she still has a sense of purpose and it has really brightened her life. At a cost of £10 a day most people can only afford to go once a week, but it’s a break in an otherwise increasingly shrinking world.

The staff are wonderful. It does a fantastic job.

However, this week there was an announcement that the council are withdrawing their funding in June and if the centre is to stay open then the cost will have to rise to £25 a day!

All the people using this facility are old and many are unfit – how many people, let alone pensioners are going to be able to find £100 a month to fund their one day out a week.

Of course, the inevitable will happen and the centre will close due to lack of custom and yet another wonderful facility will be lost for the most vulnerable members of Mr Cameron’s society. I think I would have preferred to pay of few pounds more on my council tax each month than watch our society decimated in this way.

To say I am disgusted in an absolute understatement.

Hilary Neillans

Wirral

Wrong priority

TWO days after reading that Wirral Council will have to lose 1,100 jobs, the local Lib Dems pushed through their Focus ‘look what we have done’ leaflet, and the headlines were about benches in the local park, nothing about the problems to be borne by the people who will lose their jobs or those other people who rely on services provided by these departments.

Life is suffering without worrying about park benches.

Ian Gillies

Birkenhead

No to store

I UNDERSTAND that an application has been made for another Tesco store on the former petrol station site at Townfield Lane in Prenton.

I trust that the planning committee will take into account the impact that such a store will make on other units on this site. A new store will need considerable parking spaces which can only be provided by reducing the parking facilities for the other occupiers.

The application should be refused on parking grounds alone.

I cannot see that there is any demand for another such store.

Tesco is a vast, international supermarket developer in business to make profits and does not seem to care who it crushes. It has, no doubt, already put thousands of small retailers out of business. Our planners should not help them on their way.

Don Roberts

Prenton

Time to switch off

A FEW years ago World Wildlife Fund started what is called Earth Hour when people around the world switch off electric lights for one hour every year.

This year it is on Saturday, March 26, between 8.30 and 9.30pm. This saves thousands of tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere and I appeal to all readers who are concerned about climate change and global warming to join in this easy and cost-free exercise.

Diana Gray,

Green Party Member, Wirral

Sellers needed

A VERY big thank you to everyone who turned up to our car boot sale on the Saturday morning at the Oldershaw school (Wirral Works, March 2).

We were really encouraged by how positive everyone was. But we need more sellers to turn up next time Saturday March 19, 9am, and to make it a big success. Thanks from all the students.

Connor Fairclough

Via email