PLEASE keep your letters to 250 words maximum giving your name, address and daytime telephone number - even on emails. Email: letters@swindonadvertiser.co.uk. Write: Swindon Advertiser, 100 Victoria Road, Swindon, SN1 3BE. Phone: 01793 501806.

Anonymity is granted only at the discretion of the editor, who also reserves the right to edit letters.

Disturbed by inflation

I WAS appalled and ashamed to read of the latest assault on our health service, this time by drug supplier Actavis UK (Times 17th Dec).

The facts are as straightforward as they are disturbing. Auden, a business within Actavis UK acquired a licence for hydrocortisone, a life-saving drug used by thousands of patients from Merck, Sharp and Dohme.

In March this year they increased the price of 10mg tablets from 70p to £87.85 and 20mg tablets from £1.07 to £102.74. These are increases of 12,500 per cent when inflation is running at less than two per cent.

I have spent a lifetime in the auto industry and I have to ask what planet are the NHS procurement team on? It seems they may have just signed this off.

Before you can qualify as a supplier in the auto industry you have to commit to lowering prices year on year, otherwise you will not be selected no matter how good your technology.

I worked with a company in the 1990s who tried to do the same to Ford – increase the price of a component from £9.99 to £99. We were facing a High Court injunction before the ink had dried on our email.

We were instructed by the judge to continue supply at the contracted price. We had also signed an ‘inflation only’ contract (as all drug suppliers should be required to do by NICE before they even get on the supply base) before we could be nominated, so at trial, we needed to show and justify the cost drivers directly influencing the price of this particular part and not R & D for any future ideas. We could not of course do this.

The NHS needs to start to use its unique commercial muscle to wipe the floor with charlatans and chancers who would seek to use blackmail and patient suffering as a way of extracting unjustified and unearned millions from us taxpayers.

I note the Chancellor needs to borrow way more than his £68 billion target this year, which is what we need to pay for government spending over and above taxation to fund our healthcare.

Short of euthanasia, there is little we can do to stem the costs of an ageing population with complex medical needs, but I’m sure any second grade buyer from the Ford Motor Co could do a better purchasing job than current NHS procurement seem able to deliver – perhaps even my five-year-old granddaughter.

JOHN STOOKE

Swindon

.....

Battling against cancer

NEW Year, new you? With 2017 approaching many people will be making resolutions, so this year will you pledge to fight for young lives struck by cancer?

CLIC Sargent, the leading charity in the UK for children and young people with cancer, would love everyone in Wiltshire to get inspired to start fundraising in 2017. So why not come up with your own unique fundraising ideas in the New Year?

Become a CLIC Sargent Can Collector, take on that half marathon you’d always thought about, do a raffle at work, become a charity stamp champ, organise a sponsored walk or a charity quiz. Any support you can provide will make a difference to the families we support.

Our recent Cancer Costs campaign research revealed that when a child is going through treatment families can be spending an extra £600 a month. This puts a strain on budgets, causing many to fall into debt.

This isn’t right or fair. With your help in 2017 we can reach those families, providing support financial advice and grants, to help minimise the damage cancer causes to young people beyond their health.

To find out more about fundraising contact James.McDonald@clicsargent.org.uk or visit www.clicsargent.org.uk.

JAMES MCDONALD

CLIC Sargent fundraising manager

.....

Take some pride in town

IT’S VERY difficult at times to back the claim I am proud to be a Swindonian, as we are so often let down.

On this occasion I was off with my wife to enjoy a weekend away at Paignton for a Tinsel And Turkey break. We were waiting for our coach to arrive at Bay 18/19 at the bus station. From where I was sat I could see all the cobwebs in the ceiling, but I will ignore that as the point I want to make is from a visitor’s first impression of our town.

The posh 2016 Mercedes Benz coach pulled in, which already had passengers on board from Abingdon and Oxford who were waiting to get off to use the toilets.

When they got back on, the topic of conversation to the driver was the disgusting state of the toilets.

He tried to defend Swindon by saying a new bus station had been promised for some time.

Swindon Borough Council take note, if you want this town to be successful then do something about it. Thousands of people come here to visit the Outlet Centre, go to the Cotswolds, visit the Steam Museum etc and will perhaps in the future want to see our new Art Gallery/Museum so please get something done about a simple job of making the toilets presentable.

BRIAN PHILLIPS

Wroughton

....

Support for industry

THERE was an excellent letter from David Collins (The Adver, December 21) saying how some of the great inventions made by British scientists had been lost to foreign competition over the years.

One that Mr Collins missed was the Blue Streak Rocket. This was made in Britain and was years ahead of its time but got cancelled in 1960.

The Harrier Jump Jet was a fantastic plane but instead of developing a Harrier Mark 2 we cancelled the project and bought from the USA.

At one time Britain had a marvellous system of apprenticeships. This allowed skills to be passed down the generations. When the school leaving age was raised to 16 it spelled the end of the apprenticeship system in Britain.

Margaret Thatcher decided in the 1980s that Britain should move away from making things. Her anti-industry philosophy was copied by all the later Prime Ministers and now Theresa May.

Government support is required if British industry is to prosper in the future. The government and industry should work as partners to ensure that British inventions go into production in Britain and are not allowed to slip into the hands of foreign competition.

TERRY HAYWARD

Burnham Road, Swindon

....

Opinions are informed

IN MY last ever reply to personal insults, regarding Peter Smith’s remarks about me not blushing over my opinion on the nonsensical climate change financial rip-off scam (The Adver, December 20) I wonder if the snowfall reported in the Sahara Desert this week and pictured in the national newspapers gave him rosy cheeks. He probably thinks they were faked.

He states that the press are owned lock stock and barrel by the Tory press. The Daily Mirror, The Guardian and The Morning Star certainly had me fooled.

Regarding his remark that the press provides the source for my opinions I can assure him my eyes and ears travelling all over Britain in the last few years and being treated in hospitals in Swindon, Reading and London, have more to do with it.

Is it prejudicial to want my country back as a sovereign nation controlling its own borders, making its own laws and regaining our vast fishing rights, to mention but a few?

Is it prejudicial to think wind turbines are inefficient and costly, while pensioners freeze to death due to increased utility bills?

Is it prejudicial to think my country is full up, and this is detrimental to indigenous citizens, and controlled immigration is well overdue?

Is it prejudicial to think the closing of senior citizens and handicapped children’s homes while giving away 12 billion borrowed pounds on Foreign Aid is a disgrace? If it is, then count me in.

BILL WILLIAMS

Merlin Way, Covingham, Swindon.

....

Get priorities in order

CURRENTLY the Department For International Development chucks £12 billion around the planet in defiance of warnings from experts and economists; the budget will over the next decade rocket to £16 billion.

Little wonder then we see an Ethiopian girl pop group leaping for joy in the news bulletins – our money exported while this government cuts everything to the bone and more.

Are the pop band that awful they have to be subsidised to the tune of £9 million by British taxpayers who have absolutely no say in the matter, many struggling to pay energy bills?

The aid boom fuels conflict, feeds corruption and undermines democracy by fostering welfare dependency.

Sticky foreign fingers dip into the cash cow from Whitehall coffers with weary regularity along its gold route. Cash which has even aided repressive regimes.

Last week in Parliament a Tory MP asked ‘surely charity begins at home?’

Not here, it appears. Theresa May, replete in her new £1,000 trousers, declined the centuries-old, home-grown wisdom.

Meanwhile, policewoman Sally Barnes, of West Yorkshire police, shocked by the abject poverty she has come across has appealed for Christmas presents for two young boys in foster care who have never had pillows, toothbrushes or toys. (Her comments). These boys are not a one-off.

Insane.

JEFF ADAMS

Bloomsbury

Swindon

....

Unite now against hatred

WE ALL know that ISIS terrorists have been planting bombs in Muslim mosques and in the markets of Middle East countries for several years, indiscriminately killing large numbers of innocent Muslim children and citizens, murderously against the will of Allah.

Muslims have been targeted by these evil criminals, compared to non-Muslims, at a ratio of 20 to one.

It would be insane for Westerners to blame Muslims for these atrocities, when they have largely been the victims. We, the people of principle, must unite against the corrosive hatred of the demented mind, all over the globe.

C N WESTERMAN,

Meadow Rise,

Brynna, Mid Glam