From Broken Britain to the BBC, our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent in their letters to the editor...

Problems aren't all due to Brexit

I live in Spain and we too queue to get an appointment to see the doctor. We queue for many things. Perhaps not as long as in Britain because we do not have the density of people.

But Brexit did not cause the problems in Britain. The cause was because Britain, under John Major, signed up the country politically to be governed by the EU parliament. That is the cause of our problems.

Their parliamentarians do not want to lose our money hence they cause as many problems as they can, but the cause was joining in the first place.

R.G. Barber

Our country is not ‘broken’

Robert Boston states with certainty that while Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, the UK was an international laughing stock. That would be the Boris Johnson who, if news reports are to be believed, was invited by Ukraine to become its Prime Minister and being New York born, some in the USA invited him to consider running for president!

It would also be the UK that now has over 50 member countries in the Commonwealth, the most recent of which has no historical ties with the UK, but applied to join because they admire the principles and values on which it is founded.

That would also be the UK (and in his words the ‘broken Brexit Britain’) that is still second only to the USA in NATO and one of only five countries that are permanent members of the UN Security Council.

It is the UK that has given the world the international language (and that includes the EU where even after the UK’s departure, it continues to be the most used language of its members). English continues to be the most widely spoken language in the world. It is the international language of business and commerce, and is being studied and learned by thousands more people every day. Indeed, the UK is a country so widely admired that the BBC World Service is the channel that thousands tune into, not only to keep up with world affairs, but to learn to speak English!

We should be proud of how our country is perceived around the world, because no country of our geographical size (and many far bigger) has greater influence, right across the globe.

Yes, this country is currently experiencing difficult times and it cannot be ignored that even our Royal Family is enduring a barrage of allegations and criticism, but both will prevail. We as a people and our royalty will emerge from this, because we and they are resilient and go to the very heart of who we are as a nation. We are not broken!

Christopher Hudson-Gool

BBC is vital to Britain's future

I wonder if your readers recognise the picture of the BBC painted by Colin Bullen in his recent letter to your paper, because I certainly didn’t.

I consider myself to be a discerning listener and viewer still using some of the skills I picked up at university as an undergraduate studying history for three years some 50 years ago. As a secondary school teacher, I worked in the Medway Towns for almost 40 years, teaching history up to A-level, all the while promoting those skills in my pupils, not only to help in their understanding of the history they studied, but also the contemporary world in which they lived.

If I had taught Colin Bullen as a pupil, on the basis of the contents of his letter, I would have considered that, with him, I had failed miserably in my mission.

Certainly, if his letter had constituted a piece of written work I would have found myself writing in the margin in my red pen, "Where is your evidence?", next to his statements relating to the BBC that, in the news, there is "blatantly slanted reporting"; dramas "reveal that their programmes present a totally bigoted view of history and contemporary Britain"; in history programmes "past achievements are ignored" and "ordinary, patriotic Britons are targeted as being the villains of our island story".

By the same token, I would have taken up my red pen against the conspiracy theory which lies at the heart of his letter, enshrined in his opinion that "the BBC is dominated by those who have always hated their own country" who have, in our universities been "deliberately brain-washed" by social theories which "bear no relation to the realities of the world". Apparently, they are: "A very small minority who are allowed to impose their prejudices on the rest of us". None of this is, or can, be backed by a shred of evidence.

Using evidence, I think I could make a good case arguing that the BBC, alongside the monarchy and the NHS are three of the pillars which support modern Britain and add a personal note and say: “May that long remain the case”.

John Cooper

Nurses striking for better care

The NHS is the jewel in our crown, and is envied around the world. In the USA, former President Obama tried to put through Obama Care, but was defeated by right-wingers.

Our beloved NHS developed as the result of two World Wars, the Spanish Flu epidemic, the need for treatment of our services personnel due to physical and mental trauma and the rise in killer diseases like tuberculosis and diptheria due to slum accommodation and people living in close quarters.

Fast forward to 2023, social housing often being dangerously mouldy and damp, causing respiratory disease. Old diseases like polio seem to be on the return. We need our NHS and need a whole review and change in our housing practices plus an acknowledgement of how the NHS is not only involved in treatment and cure but disease prevention and health promotion.

Deadly diseases like cholera were defeated by health scientists like John Snow tracing the links back to a water pump in Soho in the Victorian era.

We need our NHS more than ever and do actually pay for it through National Insurance and taxation. We have the current maelstrom of Covid, flu plus old diseases rearing their ugly head.

I am proud of our NHS and it’s multiple achievements since its inception in 1948. I am also proud of having been an NHS nurse. Our nurses are striking for a rightful increase in their pay but also for more resources to help their patients.

Tracy Jane Wilton

New structures won’t improve health service

In response to the comments about the NHS by Secret Thinker - you get what you pay for: In 1948, income tax was 45%. I am not suggesting we return to those days. However, less than 2% will fix the situation.

We all need to remember that the huge NHS organisation spends around 5% on management, compared to very large private sector organisations and a similar disparity is found in the amounts spent on research and development, which has a direct effect on bringing about change or not.

Why is it that some people imagine changing structures will fix the fundamental reality that we need to spend more on health and social care, including operational management. During this time, many really good, hard working and dedicated people in commissioning organisations lost their jobs and received redundancy payments to be re-employed later in a differently guised organisation, burnt out, retired early or simply left in disillusionment. Changing the structure does not necessarily change the way operational managers manage nor improve the systems, processes and outcomes. That requires more to be spent at those levels – the sharp end.

There is no doubt that NHS management has improved and could be improved further. Such improvement will better serve the public if they occur at local level. Let’s also not forget the immense pressure faced by everyone working in the health and social care sector brought about by the pandemic.

Not only do we owe them all a debt of gratitude we should also ensure that press reporting is based in fact not merely political ideology.

Joe Wall

Healthcare must not be for profit

My husband and I were born before the start of the NHS and, as children, our lives were saved by it. My parents told me about how life was before this, when a doctor asked if you could afford to pay him before you were treated. The government’s plan is to allow the American health care companies to take over the profitable parts of the NHS.

Unfortunately people haven’t been following these plans because they no longer value this service that is free at the point of need – at the moment. America has the worst health care possible and if you don’t have insurance or private means you can expect to be abandoned.

Kay Murphy

Don't undermine our way of life

We are constantly harangued by the green lobby who insist that, if we do not obey their diktats then, in the words of Dad’s Army’s Private Frazier “we’re all doomed”.

However, these people are comparable to those pathetic individuals, haunting high streets, whom one used to see with their placards ‘The End is Nigh’, or to those religious groups who, decades ago, made the mistake of predicting the date of the end, and, when their deadline had passed, quickly recalculated to push the date comfortably into a more distant future.

In 1970 ecologist Kenneth Watt claimed that within a decade those living in cities would have to wear gas masks because of atmospheric pollution, as well as stating that by the turn of the century all the oil reserves in the world would be gone. Also that year Harvard biologist George Wald stated that civilisation will end within 15 to 30 years unless immediate action is taken, while one of the most extreme believers in the immediacy of the apocalypse, biologist Paul Stanford, was asserting in 1968 that there would be widespread global famine in the following decade. None of this scaremongering is proved correct.

The ecological extremists today, worshippers of the Scandinavian teenager Greta Thunberg, are just as misguided, but unfortunately we are paying far too much attention to their claims and allowing them to undermine the very basis of our industrialised economies.

Scientific progress should be our watchword, not a childish desire to return us to the dark ages. These people regard humanity as a plague, would have us back in the caves if they could, and threaten our lives because of their obsessions. If we need to, then we can do what we have always done, adapt to change, not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Colin Bullen

'What occurred to me was while one novel was an account of a journey into the darkness, Prince Harry’s book is also an account of a journey into the darkness. The darkness of his own backside...'

Government needs to choose

The government is being very selective with its concern about inflation.

On one hand, it is adamant that the nurses’ demand for a pay increase of inflation plus 5% is inflationary. On the other hand, it has no problem with telecom and broadband providers using small-print escalator clauses in their fixed-term contracts to increase their charges by inflation plus 4% every year.

The government has the power to disallow such abusive clauses in adhesion contracts (where the provider has disproportionate power and the consumer cannot negotiate the terms of the contract) but it chooses not to act. Perhaps the nurses should reduce their demand to inflation plus 4%.

Derek Wisdom

Prince Harry’s dark journey

Earlier this week, I was in a bookshop wondering what to do with my book token I had received on Christmas Day.

It was as I was looking at some books on local history that I noticed the choices of two women in the queue near me.

One had a paperback copy of Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night) by Louis-Ferdinand Celine and the other was carrying a hardback copy of Spare by our own Prince Harry.

What occurred to me was that whilst Celine’s bleak novel is (as with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness) a journey into the darkness, Prince Harry’s book is also an account of a journey into the darkness. The darkness of his own backside.

Jane Marlow