I AM writing to thank all your readers for coming along to our special cancer memorial, held at the National Wildflower Centre, at Court Hey Park, throughout June.
The memorial was held as part of the World Cancer Research Fund’s (WCRF) annual Wildflower Appeal. The memorial campaign gives people who have been affected by or lost loved ones to cancer the chance to pay tribute by planting wildflower seeds in their own gardens and make a donation in aid of cancer prevention.
By making a donation to the Wildflower Appeal, people can take comfort that they are doing something to help prevent cancer cases in the future.
For more information, visit www.wcrf-uk.org/wildflower and please remember to mention the Wildflower Appeal when you call.
Teresa Nightingale, Head of Fundraising, World Cancer Research Fund
Move forward
I HAVE just read the article in your paper about the apology Mr Chapman received from the House of Commons Fees Office.
ŠI hope now that everyone can move forward and allow good constituency MPs like Mr Chapman to get back to the business they were elected to carry out.
Susan Davies, Neston
What next?
WHAT is next on New Labour’s covert regionalisation list? Is it a new “Supra” Neuro-Surgical hospital in Manchester to replace the excellent facilities we have at Walton?
Let’s have the list published up-front so we can plan all these emergency helicopter flights – or maybe just what our votes should be at the next election.
C McKenna, Waterloo
Spending row
AFTER years of condemning the Opposition for not detailing their spending plans prior to an election, Labour have now done the same.
It is also strange that, despite all parties indicating that there will have to be public spending cutbacks after the election, Labour is still expanding the number of employees in the public sector. Of course, it is not the number of people in the public sector that matters but the efficiency therein – sadly, this is deteriorating while the headcount expands – too many bureaucrats, too many diversity, equality and inclusion officers, too much introspection.
More depressing than the stratospheric current borrowing, over £500m per day, the concomitant increase in interest payments and decades of payment commitments for poor Private Finance Initiative contracts is the dearth of positive ideas from the parties.
How about re-negotiating our treaty with the EU to one of fair trade? It would save tens of billions annually in direct payments, business regulation and other bureaucracy, it would also substantially re-invigorate our agriculture and fishing industries. We also need a realistic re-appraisal of just about every aspect of government, but, be it due to a lack of intelligence or too many vested interests or conflicts of interest, that seems beyond our politicians.
I see Liverpool council have just undertaken an expensive review in how to improve democracy, emphasising how out of touch they are. It's simple – referenda where people can vote on what they want, that would end some of the waste, eg, the destruction of good terraced housing and expensive and unwanted city centre gentrification schemes.
Mark Bill, via email
Little concern
IT CONCERNS me that we have grown accustomed to the reports of death and serious injury to our soldiers and other military personnel in Afghanistan. The same politicians who squander tax-payers’ money upon themselves make monumental decisions to send our soldiers to war and many pay the ultimate price.
We sit in the comfort of our own homes while our soldiers patrol in Helmand Province vulnerable to daily detonated roadside bombs that we are reduced for convenience to referring to as IEDs (improvised explosive devices).
The death of Major Sean Birchall, of the Rifles, brings the growing toll of service deaths to 169. It strikes me that the least we can do in the comfort of our armchairs is to seriously question the policy of the Government in prosecuting what many of our experienced officers are already describing as a futile war, fought without enough men and without enough equipment for a country whose citizens haven't the slightest desire of embracing our Western notion of democracy and so-called freedoms.
This is a war not to protect our borders or our citizens, but to pacify a people steeped in a tribal culture which has spawned unrest in the region for hundreds of years. History should remind us of the Victorian venture when we sent an expeditionary force of 30,000 to capture Kabul and one solitary soldier returned to India at the conclusion. Blair has often been described as Bush's poodle. Does Brown want to be crowned with the same epithet in terms of Obama? Is the sacrifice of one more gallant British life worth the gamble? Are we going to allow the toll to rise even higher, given that the Army now predicts a continued presence in Afghanistan for at least five years?
David Kirwan, Prospective Independent MP Wirral West
Misleading
IN RESPONSE to Charles Korsham’s letter (“It’s just one big mistake” Daily Post, Monday, June 29), I want to set the record straight. The new Museum of Liverpool has been built on land owned by National Museums Liverpool, and has no relationship to the next-door commercial development.
Funding for the Museum has nothing to do with the "sale" of someone else’s land, and it is inaccurate and misleading to suggest anything else.
Joanna Rowlands, Director of Marketing and Communications
