LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Just how Hitler rose to power

Goodbye democracy, hello oligarchy. After the last war, people read of the rise of Hitler’s government and said “How did the people let it happen?” Look around you, folks, it’s that easy.

My first sight of the Advertiser this week was a picture of people without bank accounts queueing to cash discounted government rebate cheques at the local loan shop. Sheffield apparently used an e-voucher payment system which allows the claimant to draw the full value of the rebate at a post office or supermarket, but RMBC apparently finds it hard to use such a system. Now I wonder if uncashed cheques are easier to absorb into the RMBC bank accounts than unused e-vouchers.

Pity about the temporary closure of the Bluebell Wood hospice, but a charity owned medical facility that costs £5 million per annum to run with only £75,000 from the Government, and having to compete with an equally strapped NHS in coping with the Conservative created shortage of qualified medical staff, it is hardly surprising. Still, good luck to both of them.

999 calls are apparently taking longer than the target of ten seconds to answer. Doesn’t sound a big problem, but imagine you’re in a house with armed burglars breaking in, or a fire raging in the kitchen, or someone dying in the bed beside you, then time a ten second wait for an answer and see how long it feels, and that’s just for the connection. Scary. The last time I had to use 999 was a very long time ago, but I’m certain it was faster then.

Cllr Wilson is complaining that local Labour councillors spend meeting time debating national issues instead of local ones.

My comments to her are the same as I made to her fellow councillor’s letter shortly after the election (the full one that is, not the by-election that resulted from your associates who never bothered to turn up), namely that the majority of local government’s problems are a direct result of previous central government decisions, and so are relevant in local authority debates for that reason. However, in the case of RMBC it doesn’t apply, as both of you are the same, totally concerned with scoring points off each other whilst watching your own backs, equally unconcerned with the public’s problems except where they can be used as bullets against the opposition or to feather your own nests, and both parties occupying seats that could be better filled by people with a real concern for the area and willing to campaign for local people’s needs.

Finally, good news for Woodsetts and Harthill, despite the Conservative government’s decision to resurrect fracking, the same government’s planning authority have decided that our two local drilling applications will not go ahead. Naturally we are overjoyed at the news, including our local Conservative MP who has intimated that it is all because of his efforts.

My worry is that he may be right, and that the only reason we have escaped the destruction is because of its effect on his chances of re-election at the next general election, if it ever happens.

And that’s all for now, folks

Charles David Foulstone, Rotherham Green Party