Your letters on Spalding road, Holbeach politics, old age and the environment
Car nearly hit me as I was crossing road
I was crossing the road in Spalding town centre using the pedestrian rule of looking right, left and right again when a car parked facing the oncoming traffic shot out towards me and very nearly knocked me down.
It also just missed a car coming towards him.
Rule 239 of the road Traffic Act states do not park facing the traffic flow.
The rule is there for a reason, not just to help pedestrians but to prevent road collisions.
Rule 248 states you must not park at night facing against the traffic flow unless in recognised parking places.
In this area I have seen many drivers parking facing the oncoming traffic – I would ask drivers to please park in the right way.
I feel compelled to write after the experience of very nearly being knocked down.
It is also not good for the blind and disabled people.
Red Barrett
Spalding
Road is accident just waiting to happen
Regarding the concerns raised by Spalding councillor Rob Gibson on the dangers of children crossing the A16 at the roundabout to get from Spalding too McDonald’s, I quite agree with him that it is an accident waiting to happen.
This route is not only used to access McDonald’s, there are nurseries and industry further along the road and villages nearby. I think one of the new planning developments in Weston mentioned the ease of walking/cycling into Spalding.
Make it safer and people will use it.At the moment there is no vision to encourage walking or cycling – plenty of talking but nothing gets done.
Lincolnshire County Council dropped the idea because it did not offer value for money due to the pedestrian count.
Instead it is going to spend money on making the roundabout safer. How much will this cost?
Build the bridge while you have the money.
Lesley Wallace
via email
Having to chose between bills and food
Regarding your story on residents who rely on benefits to pay their rent, this is even worse under Universal Credit.
Disabled single people have private rent as councils cannot provide safe homes or environments for them.
So now disabled people are in private safe homes, only they don’t get enough to pay the full rent.
Some 600,000 disabled people have been moved to Universal Credit and the disability premiums have been removed.
For example, if your rent is £600 you get £400, your Universal Credit gives you £77, then the gas is around £60.
Then there’s council tax, electric, water and you have no money for food.
They are trying to put everyone in one box of sick, disabled, mentally ill, one size fits all benefit when every issue around this is different.
The worst is, people are losing so much funding they will lose their homes or their lives – whichever comes first.
Lynn Wright
via email
The penny has finally dropped for Tory councillors
So, the local Conservative councillors have finally realised that the world is facing a climate change crisis which threatens the future of humanity, but are waiting for someone else to tell them what to do. Can I offer them a few suggestions?
Start by monitoring your own activities, and those of the outside bodies who do most of your work, to see where you need to cut your own carbon footprint.
Stop allowing our green spaces, the lungs of our district, to be covered in tarmac and concrete.
Persuade your Conservative colleagues on the county council to get over their blind assumption that the answer to every problem is to throw our money at road-building.
I offer up as an example: the Spalding Western so-called Relief Road, which for the foreseeable future will be nothing more than the world’s most expensive skateboard ramp.
Remind them that, for most residents, repairing the roads we’ve already got is a much higher priority.
Offer serious support to local campaigners who are trying to reopen railway stations between Peterborough and Sleaford to take pressure off our roads. Maybe start with Littleworth and Donington.
Where new development has to take place, force developers to include safe walking and cycling routes in the design.
Since you’ll say ‘We have to do what the Government tells us’, stop supporting a Conservative government which invites the housing developers, construction companies and fossil fuel companies who bankroll it to make national policies to suit their own interests.
These changes would at least help us to catch up with the majority of local authorities in this country, which started this process some years ago. Along the way, they would also improve the quality of life of South Holland’s residents.
Martin Blake
South Holland Green Party
UK a hard place to grow old in
The UK state pension is one of the worst in Europe, providing just 58% of previous earnings from work, below the Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development average of 62%.
Those people who have to rely on the pension as a main or only source of income are facing a very bleak financial future.
There are almost eleven million people aged 65 and over, 19% of the total population. In 10 years time, this will have increased to almost 13 million people or 22% of the population.
A comprehensive review of national data on ageing makes clear, a financially secure and healthy later life is becoming increasingly unlikely for millions of people.
With the population ageing rapidly, the number of people at risk is growing at an alarming rate.
The latest data shows a sharp increase in pensioner poverty, meaning that almost one in five, some two million people, are now living in poverty.
In a period when the state pension age has risen to 66, employment rates among people approaching retirement age have fallen to their lowest levels since 2016.
The number of older people renting rather than owning their homes has reached an all time high. These factors have major implications for people’s financial security and for the quality of their homes as they age.
Also the number of people in later life are living on their own, many without the traditional family structures that our approach to ageing has relied on, has been increasing, with 1.3 million men aged 65 and over living alone, up 67% between 2000 and 2019.
These trends confirm that England is becoming a more challenging country to grow old in.
Of course the pandemic has contributed to many problems, but they are ultimately longer term issues that have been developing for some time which will have implications for housing and social care.
So instead of ignoring the ageing population in the recent Spring Statement these issues will require some concerted action from central government as these issues will not go away.
Rodney Sadd
Vice chair South Holland & The Deepings CLP
He is just a Churchill tribute act
I am at a loss to understand Robert Brown’s reasoning in his denouncement of me.
I am questioning the continuing fall in grace of our Prime Minister.
I am not comparing Putin (a war criminal) to British politics or talking about the war in Ukraine.
Week after week Boris’ lies are exposed and scandal follows scandal.
A journalist once used the term ‘Public Enemy No 1’ about Jeremy Corbyn. The pubic voted decisively against him and what was seen as his misguided policies but I never heard his basic honesty and integrity questioned unlike the incumbent in number ten.
I heard Mr Johnson described as a ‘Winston Churchill tribute act.’ That sums him.
He is making political capital out of sending arms to Ukraine but he is one of three Conservative Prime Minister’s who had previously refused to do so.
This man is patently unfit for the highest office. Given his on going behaviour his popularity will continue to fall and he will look to call a snap election to scrap back in to office.
I sometimes wonder if there is any hope for this country.
Rick Stringer
Sutton St James
Report would be of interest to all in town
In response to Victoria Fear’s report on Holbeach Parish Council’s recent meeting in which Coun Tim Wiltshire met resistance to his report on the issues around problems within the council being made public.
It is puzzling that the chair says the report should be “open and transparent” but only to his colleagues.
Since the council has been losing councillors at an alarming rate for a considerable period of time, Coun Wiltshire’s report should be of interest to Holbeach residents as a whole. After all, open and transparent means just that and if the report sheds light on just why the retention of councillors is such a problem, this can only be a good thing.
Chris Utting
via email