Disgusted by council’s treatment of Fisher
I am disgusted with how Southwark Council have treated Fisher FC.
The club’s preparations for the new season are on hold as they’ve now left Dulwich Hamlet and the council continue to keep hold of the key leaving the club in limbo.
The deal was done, Fairview donated and built the new St Pauls ground as part of the Surrey Docks Stadium regeneration with Fisher FC very much at the forefront.
The Council are effectively holding the club to ransom and killing their preparations for the new season and beyond.
The whole idea was to allow an historic and local institution to rebuild and serve the community – it’s not always about the immediate best deal but what the long term goal should be.
The council should honour the original deal and let Fisher FC rebuild.
The club have campaigned for too long to have the rug pulled from under their feet at the last leg – it’s quite simply cruel!
G Jennings, Bermondsey
Keep care home here
Your article ‘Care home could close and move to Kent’ Southwwark News, June 2 2016, alerts us to the proposed closure of yet another SLaM Specialist Care Unit for older people with mental health problems including dementia.
Worse still, the plan is that the residents of Ann Moss Unit in Bermondsey will be moved to Chelsham House at the Royal Bethlem Hospital in Beckenham.
This will not only cause additional confusion for the residents who move but will make it much more difficult for their family and friends to visit them.
It seems there is a never-ending reduction of residential and day care places for the most vulnerable elderly people in Southwark.
SLaM has already closed Aubrey Lewis Ward 2 in the Maudsley Hospital and replaced it with a Home Treatment team which may well provide a good, intensive service but it is short-term when deteriorating older people need long-term support.
At an earlier stage Felix Post Day Care Unit in the Maudsley and Holmdene Day Care Centre in Herne Hill were closed.
Camberwell Green Nursing Home, one of only three Nursing Homes for older people in Southwark, closed at the end of last year.
Southwark Council is also planning to close Southwark Park Day Care Centre and Fred Francis Day Care Centre in East Dulwich. These will be replaced with one centre providing a hub of day care services in Cator Street.
The loss of all these public services means that those of us who have the misfortune to suffer from dementia in the future will have to access residential care in the private sector.
The state of Southwark’s Nursing Homes does not inspire any confidence in this prospect.
Those people who would have been provided with day care in the past are likely to be depending on family members or to be lonely at home with short visits from domiciliary care agencies.
This dire state of affairs may have been brought about by cuts in funding to both local authorities and health services but surely we can find a way to keep Ann Moss Unit open for older people in Southwark.
Sally Lynes, Camberwell
Going back to carrier pigeons
I read with interest on your letter page about the disappearing post boxes by Jeremy Leach, Walworth Society.
I did make a member enquiry about this, the response I got was to contact Royal Mail.
I had many of my constituents contact me to ask why this post box was sealed up?
I have many elderly in my ward who rely on this particular post box (outside Marks and Spencers in Walworth Road)
They are not online and don’t have a computer. It seems we have to go back to carrier pigeon times, what do others think?
Any suggestions?
Cllr Lorraine Lauder, Faraday ward
To my MP:?Why I want to leave the EU
In his ‘View from Westminster’ column in Southwark News Neil Coyle makes a number of assertions in support of a remain vote in the EU referendum which are fundamentally wrong and misinformed.
Our economy does not depend on our membership of the EU but rather on the ability to trade freely with an ever global world.
One can do no better than refer to Sir Stuart Rose the leader of the Stronger in Europe campaingn who, in his evidence to the Treasury Select Committe, said that if we left the EU our economy would grow and wages would rise. He went on to say this was not necessarily a good thing – why it is difficult to understand. Secondly the Primeminister was forced to say this week that he did not in any way resile from the statement he made earlier this year that the UK would could ‘thrive’ outside the EU.
Much is said of the supposed benefits of the single market, yet the EU has persistently failed to complete the single market in financial services in which the City is pre-eminent and which is so vital to our GDP. Our trade within the EU has declined significantly over the last decade and freed from the shackles of a stagnant eurozone economy we would be able to trade globally and freely rather than being inward looking and protectionist as EU members. Co-operate with our neighbours and friends in the EU yes, but we do not have to do so at the expense of our relationship with the rest of the world..
Our security services are amongst the best and most effective in the world and this, together with NATO and the Five Eyes Group comprised of the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, through which we receive the bulk of our intelligence data are what safeguards our security.
In addition The proposals for an EU Army would severely threaten NATO. It is clear that those who would harm us can all too easily enter the EU through it’s permeable external border and once in can cross from one end of the schengen zone to the other.
Any suggestion that a leave vote would lead to a second Scottish referendum is a red herring. It could not happen without facilitating legislation through the UK Parliament and it is unlikely any Government would agree to this. In addition Scotland’s First Minister does not have a majority in the Scottish Parliament and so could not get through even a motion supporting a request to the British Government for such a referendum. It is simply a scare tactic along with the plague, pestilence and WW3 we have already been promised in the event of a leave vote.
Neil further asserts that voting to remain in the EU is the ‘patriotic’ thing to do thereby also asserting that to vote to leave is ‘unpatriotic. This I find insulting and offensive to the millions of people like me who will vote to leave on June 23rd and who care deeply about their country. Membership of the EU has involved a massive loss of Sovereignty. We are now governed by an unelected Commission and 59% of our laws now emanate from there.(House of Commons Library figure). The Highest Courts in our Land are subject to being overturned by the European Court of Justice. Whilst members of the EU we can do nothing about this or rid ouselves of the unelected beaurocrats in Brussels. The so called European Parliament cannot initiate legislation and what decisions it does make can be overturned by the Commission. We can no longer truly be a sovereign democratic state and be a member of the EU. It is a matter of great sadness that someone elected to Parliament so recently would so readily support ceding our mature parliamentary democracy which has taken over 800 years to develop and to an external body.
The risks of remaining in the EU are clear. There is a real risk of another Eurozone crisis, the EU has shown itself incapable of dealing with the migrant crisis apart from promising accelerated accession to Turkey despite the human rights abuses, the far right is on the rise across the EU to name just a few and yet the response seems to be ‘we need more Europe’. For the sake of my children, our Sovereignty and our democracy I will vote to leave on June 23rd.
Janet Hodge, Bermondsey