WITH cuts needed to be made, what is going through the minds of those at Kirklees Council who are deciding where to make the cuts?
Is it an accountant looking at the books and deciding where the most is spent and therefore where they can cut pounds off services? Or are they looking at the value of the many services the council offers and cutting those with little value to the majority?
Based on decisions made in recent months, I can only assume it is the former – a mathematician who cares only for doing his/her job right regardless of the impact his/her decisions have.
First they reassess every adult with disabilities in a bid to stop paying for much-needed care. Then they decide to ‘privatise’ the home care services (‘Home care services set to be privatised’, Examiner, May 31).
I speak as someone with experience of a family member who needs this service. These decisions will harm the reputation of the service.
Private companies exist to make a profit. Money made is not ploughed back into continuing to provide the care needed. It goes to pay shareholders and bonuses.
Kirklees, please do not go ahead with this decision.
You’ve almost lost the support of the people with bad decision after bad decision, do not hit the nail into your own coffin.
LD
Fenay Bridge
Save money elsewhere
SO Kirklees need to save £80million over the next three years do they?
So what do they instantly do, they target the most vulnerable – the elderly, the disabled.
Why don’t they stop giving our home care jobs to individuals who run the private home care sector and who pocket vast amounts of money and don’t put it back into the care, training of staff or service users.
Shame on our council.
I’m a home care assistant of two decades with Kirklees and am just about to lose my job to the private sector.
Home care assistant
Huddersfield
It’s not good enough
I ALONG with many local people think it is outrageous that the local community cannot support the elderly in their own home.
Kirklees Council hold your head in shame!
I know from experience that the private sector does not provide the same standard and quality of care as that which is provided by the Kirklees Council-run home care staff.
Many of the private sector staff seem to have very little training and are not given sufficient time to do the job correctly.
SS
Huddersfield
Our town sold short
I SEE that Wakefield has recently opened the Hepworth Gallery.
I see that work is underway to begin a multi-million pound sports complex, again in Wakefield.
I see that Immingham in Lincolnshire is opening a regional skatepark.
In Kirklees a new Poundland is opening!
I know that a new sports centre is supposed to be developed – against the wishes of residents – on the Spring Grove car park, albeit without provision for the most popular activities, but it could have been so much more.
Anyone with a modicum of awareness knew that Tesco needed the new site more than we needed a new centre and therefore would surely have agreed much more than Kirklees planners asked for – and yet it seems that instead Tesco have got the bargain of the century.
There were all sorts of claims about what we would get in exchange for a prime site and the further despoiling of Huddersfield town centre, but what has emerged is really not good enough.
Yet again we have been sold short by the people elected to do the best for us.
Trevor Woolley
Linthwaite
Quality is the future
NO more pound shops.
Huddersfield will be getting nicknames like Cheap Street or Tacky Town, do we really want this?
We need to attract people to our town not drive them away to towns with better shops.
We should be adding better quality shops, for example, let’s have more shoe shops, children’s clothes shops and bigger brands.
How many pound shops do we need?
Old jack, lover of quality shops
Huddersfield
We can do better
THE old Ethel Austin shop would make a nice shoe shop and warehouse. We’ve got enough pound shops.
Mr Charlesworth
Huddersfield
Interest in staying open
REGARDING the closure of the Holmfirth Adult Education Centre.
I am one of those who attends the pottery class at the Holmfirth centre.
We are all disappointed at the prospect of losing this facility and if the availability of the current building cannot be maintained then the question becomes whether Kirklees College or the council are prepared to back some other means of making this very useful facility available.
I am 75 and travel from Slaithwaite for the benefit that comes from this activity.
I am sure that it assists in maintaining both my physical and mental health.
I came across this quote from college’s Vice Principal, Melanie Brooke on the new Waterfront project. She said: “The new campus has been created with one thing in mind – providing students with 21st century learning facilities and resources. All our decisions have been taken with the best interests of learners at the very heart.”
Will the interests of us national and local taxpayers be at the heart of the College’s deliberations?
Ron Etherington
Slaithwaite
The benefits of Aid
BRENDA Holroyd (‘Putting us first’ Mailbag, June 4) seems to be, like many people, under the impression that overseas aid is simply a matter of some diplomat or staff member from the Department for International Development (DFID) getting on a plane with a suitcase full of £50 notes.
Overseas aid simply doesn’t work like that.
Much of the aid money is spent on experts from UK advising on agrarian or engineering projects and quite a bit of this work benefits UK industry through the specification of British products.
While I query the need for UK to be still an aid-donor to countries such as India and China, there must be some continuation expenditure to finance projects already in progress.
We are but one country giving aid to under-developed nations. The Irish and Scandinavians have been committed to Africa for many years and I know for a fact that British industry has benefited from that aid.
GB
Shepley
I’m no soft touch
CHARITY spokeswoman Lucy Lucy wants volunteers to home failed asylum seekers.
Does she think Joe Public are a soft touch like our government? Failed asylum seekers should be sent packing pronto.
MIKE WARREN-MADDEN
HONLEY
Thanks for support
I WOULD like to say a big thank you to all the people in Huddersfield who helped make a success of the latest League Against Cruel Sports campaign stall, which we held on the Piazza on May 28.
Along with all the campaigning materials on the stall were four different petitions. They were; Support for the Hunting Act (which outlaws hunting with dogs); Against the EU subsidies to bull breeders for use in bull fighting; Against the badger cull; and finally Against the use of snares.
We had an overwhelming response from people wanting to sign the petitions and attracted over 800 signatures in total.
The completed petitions have been returned to the League and will be presented to government ministers in order to show the strength of feeling in the country with regard to these issues.
We also collected donations of £240 which will help the League in its campaigning. Anyone wishing to contact the League may do so via their website www.league.org.uk or by phone 01483 524250.
John Lee
Netherton
