The fabric of our society is slowly disappearing

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Austerity, Brexit, and totally inept political leadership are the root cause of this crisis (EPA)

As I try to take in the news that my city council, Birmingham, has declared itself bankrupt, I find myself wondering yet again where our country is headed. I suppose I did expect, being in my 75th year, that I would be reflecting on the disappearance of “the world that I had known” but what we are now seeing far exceeds such nostalgic reflection.

Figures over the last seven years in the UK show that hundreds of GP practices and pharmacies have permanently closed and over 2,000 dentists have left the NHS in the last year. We have lost 8,000 bus routes and high streets are disappearing store by store.

Nearly half of high street banks and building societies have closed since 2015 and now hundreds of our school buildings are closed as they may be too dangerous to use.

Just in case anyone feels this is an unduly pessimistic assessment or a “glass half empty” view, I would gladly consider that in practice...were it not for the fact that around a thousand pubs have closed in the last two years!

These and numerous other disappearances represent the very fabric of our society slowly disappearing. Austerity, Brexit, and totally inept political leadership are the root causes but we, the people, need to wake up to this crisis before its tragic consequences ensue.

I now fully expect to soon hear a young parent telling their child “It didn’t used to be like this!” Maybe I need to find an optician who sells the type of rose-tinted lenses that are freely available in Westminster!

John Dillon

Northfield

Gillian Keegan needs to get off her own a*** and take Nick Gibb with her

Well done Sir Keir Starmer for using all six of his questions to the prime minister this week to raise the issue of the school’s concrete crisis and to quite rightly expose Rishi Sunak for the cowboy he is.

Sir Keir pointed out the schools that have been forced to remain closed because the Conservatives, under David Cameron and in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, scrapped the school rebuilding programme in 2010.

Meanwhile, the Department for Education under Gillian Keegan has just spent millions on a new contract benefitting none other than her own husband!

This is nothing short of a dereliction of duty on the part of both Gillian Keegan and Nick Gibb. Hence, rather than Gillian Keegan questioning people for sitting on their a***s, maybe she should get off her own and get another job, and take Nick Gibb with her.

Geoffrey Brooking

Havant

A never-ending conveyor belt of crisis

Ah, I see more governmental pigeons are coming home to roost. This time it’s the prison escape of one, Daniel Abed Khalife. The prison service has been underfunded and understaffed since the Cameron/Osborne era of austerity, leaving excuses down in the pitiful zone.

Absolutely disgraceful. I nearly said: “Things can’t get any worse!” Then I realised they undoubtedly will. In no particular order, this Tory government is on a never-ending conveyor belt of crisis, chaos, incompetence, scandal, and investigations.

Robert Boston

Kent

Doesn’t look good, does it?

We learn that a company linked to the education secretary’s husband has been given a £1m contract from a schools rebuilding fund. The Keegans may not have done anything wrong, but it doesn’t look good, does it?

I can’t decide whether to be worried that such people don’t seem to have the nous or the imagination to see the problem or relieved that their image is not always their priority after all.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

A blessing in disguise

The current concerns over Raac are in fact a bit of a gift to the Tories. Up until now, all the country’s woes were being blamed on ungrateful strikers, Covid-19 or the war in Ukraine and never, of course, on 13 years of Tory misrule. Now they have another scapegoat.

Geoff Forward

Stirling