Councillors are out of touch over car parking payments No proper structure of social support Luftwaffe thought they were bombing larger target

Card payment ticket machines in Spalding? It just goes to show how out of touch our councillors are.

Many car parks are used by older people who have been brought up in a cash-only economy. Even if they do have cards, these machines are perfect sites for thieves and fraudsters to operate around.

I suppose this follows the trends of online banking and online shopping, the pitfalls of which have been only too evidently exposed on the national news of late.

Oh well, in a town devoid of shops there’ll be no need for anyone to park their cars or do anything much else. I’m glad I’m not young any more!

Chivers

via email

With regard to Patient Participation Groups Awareness Week, Beechfield Surgery deserves congratulation for bringing this to public attention through your newspaper (Guardian, June 7).

Some six years ago Holbeach-based Littlebury Medical Centre’s PPG formed a dementia support group now known as Here-4-U. Apart from an initial £50 donation, funding and administration were entirely independent of the surgery, relying on lottery and other grants for income and on volunteers to run the group.

Upon diagnosis of dementia the patient would receive information about this support and where to find it; all too often patients and carers are left to sink or swim in a bewildering sea of leaflets without human contact.

The importance of social interaction for both dementia patients and carers, but especially carers, cannot be stressed enough. Many carers collapse under the strain of nursing a dementia patient, usually a spouse, and many find themselves isolated, at risk of mental illness themselves.

At present there is no proper structure of social support and groups are random and often unrecognised. Dementia is a continually increasing dilemma.

Repeated lobbying of the Secretary of State for Health via our MP for a statutory requirement that every Patients Group should organise dementia support has so far met with bland assurances without meaning or substance, yet such groups need cost the NHS nothing and should be no extra burden on busy practice managers.

Given the wide basis of most patient panels many would have an opportunity to help others using skills and experience garnered over the years.

For the benefit of your readers, voluntary groups known to me locally are Here-4-U, second and last Mondays of the month at the WI Hall, Park Road, Holbeach; Steve Shore, second Tuesdays 2-4pm, Church Hall, Long Sutton; Carers Lunch club, Constitutional Hall, New Road, Sutton Bridge, second Wednesdays; Long Sutton Outreach third Thursdays, Royal British Legion hall, West Street; most are open by 11.30am.

Joan Woolard

via email

Further to your article on the bombing of Spalding during the Second World War, my mother tells me that on the day following the air raid Lord Haw Haw announced that Peterborough had been bombed. While incendiary bombs were dropped on the town centre, high explosive bombs fell in the countryside around Spalding, suggesting that the Luftwaffe thought that they were bombing a larger target than they were.

James Daniels

via email