In dark times, vote for hope and civic decency

This is a heartfelt appeal to everyone in the UK who cares about the NHS, written by a GP of 36 years’ standing on the day her daughter started chemotherapy. The NHS is too precious to be destroyed by the Conservative government. Irrespective of party politics, to safeguard the future of this service, you need to vote for anyone other than the Conservatives.

The loss of hospital beds has reached a crisis point. Under this government frightening stories are increasing. These are just a few examples: no special-care paediatric beds across the whole of the English regions on some days, a patient left to die in an ambulance from sepsis because of the long wait in A&E, and this week’s sad photos of children on the floor of A&E departments. The number of nurses is at a serious low, the number of doctors in some areas is worryingly inadequate, GP appointments are booked up.

Conservative policies on Brexit and immigration will make these staff shortages worse, as will the risk of further privatisation of the NHS.

I could go on and on about poverty, homelessness, food banks etc, but the consultant has just popped back to the ward to give my daughter her personal mobile number and told her to “ring any time, day or night, if you are worried”. That sort of dedication is why the NHS is the most precious thing we have left – save it, please, by voting tactically to avoid another minute of Conservative misrule.
Amanda Platts
Corfe Castle, Dorset

• “And to have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens, I think is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are”. So said Jacob Rees-Mogg of food banks. I have volunteered at a food bank for nearly two years. I have served young families, asylum seekers, homeless people and others on low incomes. With the election now upon us, I’ve felt increasingly compromised because I’d never intended to prop up a failing social service system.

About 40% of children in the Liverpool Riverside constituency live in poverty; people need more than “charitable support”. Government policies with decency, compassion and respect would be a good start.
Name and address supplied

• On 7 June 1983, on the eve of a general election, Neil Kinnock made a speech. In it, he said: “If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain – when healing and relief depend upon payment. I warn you that you will have ignorance – when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right. I warn you that you will have poverty – when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can’t pay. I warn you that you will be cold – when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don’t notice and the poor can’t afford … I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill and I warn you not to grow old.”

Kinnock was right to warn us, but lost the election. Let’s not make the same mistake again.
John Rushby
Church Fenton, North Yorkshire

• Thank you, Philip Pullman (Drip by drip, this country has been poisoned. Let’s make Britain humane again, Journal, 11 December). Your writing was beautiful, true and heartbreaking. Those like me who are the same age as you remember being brought up in a country which shared a “common understanding of the value of civic decency”. What can we do, you ask? When decades of political engagement and argument seems to have got us nowhere, I’m in despair and out of answers. But for years now I have hung on to the view I came across in Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. “What matters at this stage is the construction of new forms of community within which civility and … moral life can be sustained through the dark ages which are already upon us.”

If our grandchildren are to grow up to shape a future world where moral integrity, a good civil society, truth and justice are central to its existence then we must keep our candles alight and pass them on.
Chris Scarlett
Sheffield

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