Your Letters: November 27

As we head further into the colder months and are layering up our winter woollies, I would like to share with readers the support that’s available through Royal Voluntary Service.

We’ve found through research that at this time of year, unfortunately, feelings of isolation and loneliness can increase significantly, which can impact our health and wellbeing. 

We want to be there for as many people as possible this winter, and so together with our friends at Yakult, we have created the Stay Safe, Warm and Well guide,  filled with essential information, practical tips, and advice.

The guide also encourages us all to make sure we are socially connected and have support in place as we face the difficulties the season can bring.

The guide includes details on how readers can sign up for Royal Voluntary Service’s telephone support services, which match volunteers who are available for a friendly chat, with people across the country who are looking to make new connections, share a story or a joke, and ease feelings of loneliness and isolation. It also shares information on accessing the charity’s Virtual Village Hall online community of events and activities.

The impact of social connection and having someone to turn to for support and conversation cannot be overstated, and we even found that 42% of those who receive telephone support from our volunteers say they visit their GP less.

Find out more at royalvoluntaryservice.org.uk/safe-warm-well. Or call 0800 731 9197 for a physical copy. A small P&P charge will apply.

Sam Ward OBE, Deputy Chief Executive of Royal Voluntary Service

ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES WORK

Seldom has a saying been more apposite than that old maxim, ‘Only fools and horses work’, than in the increasingly dysfunctional, and subtly sinister, dystopian England of 2024. 

As a self confessed mug, who worked none stop from the age of 15, and paid into the system until I retired, I grudgingly admit that all those millions of working age in this country, who are not in, or actively seeking work, have got it dead right. Unlike naive me, hamstrung by a Puritan work ethic, In growing numbers they are tuned in to the available bounty of the welfare state.

Having worked mainly in the automotive industry, doing the night shifts etc, saving, investing, building up a private pension, I find myself now the tethered goat of a predatory taxation system. I got it wrong! 

Seeing my time over again, I would do it differently. I would smirk and sneer at a system urging me to turn up, work hard, get ahead, learn a trade, be financially prudent, and get qualified. Knowing that in a future crazy England, the most important qualification, bar none is to ensure one qualifies for Universal Credit!

John Reed, Bushbury

PARKING ISSUES AN ONGOING PAIN

I empathise with Mr James Billingsley’s cri-de-coeur regarding parking fees in Wolverhampton.

My extended exchanges with Wolverhampton Council (during the ‘pandemic’) related to visitors not being helped to park using ‘cash’ (Fold Street’s machines had been taped up!). I suggested this would impact the vulnerable and affect the footfall and economy of Wolverhampton’s fine city. I, too, hope the council will redress this latest unhelpful action - and do it before Wolverhampton’s struggling shopping centre sinks further into a retail black hole.

They can raise the parking charges all they like, but when shoppers and loyal retailers are priced out of parking there, it will be an ‘own goal’ and the lifeblood of this once thriving city centre will drain away?

Chrissie Murray, Bridgnorth

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