DAVID HALPIN, of Haytor, writes:

I read the Councillor’s View by Mr Bullivant in last week’s MDA, above the opinion piece by myself focusing on care of the elderly in our troubled country in AD 2023.

I did not have time to read MP Stride’s ‘Boosting Local GP Provision’ but could respond later perhaps.

I note that the word ‘delivery’ is used five times; the milkman ‘delivers’ or used to. And how often do local and national politicians, the latter almost all career politicians who have never been proved in real work, ‘deliver’ on their easy promises.

The piece by him is somewhat upbeat, inappropriately. He notes the low turnout. Could that be that a majority of Teignbridge citizens are sick and tired of what goes for local democracy with the recent haranguing and near punch ups? Or the totalitarian feel about the ‘Neighbourhood Plans’ preceding the ramming through of permission for more boxes à la Penns Mount?

It is time for reflection Mr Bullivant. Is it right that party politics should have any part in our local councils?

The present parties are each neo-liberal - a euphemism anyway. I called them in my attempt at standing completely independent of ‘party’ in 2019 - Tweedledum, Tweedledee and tweedle, and the whole ‘Punch and Judy politics’. ‘Yes he can, no he can’t’.

Since you adhere to one party, the Conservative, might we have your opinion on some of the material in my dozen pieces focusing on ‘OUR NHS’?

We have had the worst governments ever in recent decades. In that of Johnson’s, £400 billion was spent on ‘covid’, without a scientific and rationale basis for almost of all that burning of money. As I pointed out – that is three times the annual budget of the NHS.

At the international level, do you support the UK sending cruise missiles, the Anglo-French Storm Shadow, to the Ukraine? Cost to the very hard pressed tax-payers here – £2,200,000 each? They have been ‘deployed’ by the UK in aggressive wars ie against the Charter of the UN. This in the destruction, including of many families, of Iraq and Libya. These are tipped with Uranium 238 - with known terrible effects on all creatures - for ever. We call Mr Wallace - our ‘Defence’ Secretary do we not? 

Going back to the NHS, you will know that Margaret Thatcher’s government set about dismantling all publicly owned and run services – so obvious now. Do open the home page of my web site and bottom right - ‘NHS Dismantled’.

John Furse quotes your Mr Ridley who was advising that the process should be ‘surreptitious’ - that is done very quietly. And so it was -– over 40 years. Your Messrs Letwin and Redwood said the same. For your ease, click on to the Peacock butterfly for some sense and beauty at Haytor.

Our people – so many poor, and our wonderful country with so many good people, need your thought Mr Bullivant, and care – before ‘delivery’.

As I say – ‘to care is the most important characteristic of any worthwhile society’.

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