My, my what sensitive souls the right wing contributors to the Echo Letters page are.
They are completely paranoid that every institution from the BBC to the Church of England are against their rather strange backward looking ideology and go into complete melt down over every factual criticism, continuously crying “Bias”.
The latest comes from M. Carpenter who claims that Southampton City Council are displaying political bias by not changing the lights in Civic Centre clock tower from Red to Blue every Thursday night to show support for the NHS.
Unless I am mistaken, having been been born in the city almost 65 years ago I have always been under the impression that the colour of the lights reflects the controlling political party and that the reason they are presently red is because the majority of Southampton residents voted for a Labour administration.
As M. Carpenter in this latest whimper of paranoia wishes to politicise the Thursday evening display of gratitude to our NHS, I would suggest despite being the NHS logo colour that blue would be the last colour to use, as the NHS exists today despite the Conservative party not because of their support.
From 1946 when Churchill and his Conservative party voted 21 times against the formation of the NHS claiming it to be “The start of a National Socialist state” similar to Nazi German, to the record lowest levels of funding under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s they have continuously undermined the principle of health care free at the point of delivery for all.
Goodness knows where we would be today during this Corona virus emergency if it wasn’t for the highest ever levels of investment to the NHS under the Blair / Brown government’s.
There can be political discussions over the type of finance used to achieve it, but no one can deny that between 1998 and 2008 they completely modernised and practically rebuilt the entire NHS, taking it from outdated equipment in 1940s Nissan huts to new 21st century facilities with the best equipment available in the world.
Now following yet another decade of Conservative under funding and lack of support we correctly find ourselves grateful to the work being carried by the NHS during this pandemic and hypocriticaly this gratitude is publicly supported by the present government, despite the fact that previously most of them consistently voted throughout the last decade for this under funding.
Bring politics into the Thursday evening thanksgiving if you want M. Carpenter but prepare to go into yet another meltdown over the real facts.
T.K.Tew
Netley Common
