This week's Bromsgrove and Droitwich Standard letters......

Free parking is best way to boost town centre trade

SARAH White is right (Standard Letters, July 3)

It is disappointing car park charges have returned to Bromsgrove town centre so soon.

Businesses will need several months to build up trade and regain customers, and parking charges are a negative factor for shoppers.

As Sarah says, extending free parking for several months would be a positive and encouraging boost for Bromsgrove traders.

Remember the superstores nearby in the Birmingham Road have free parking.

Michael Shaughnessy

Bromsgrove

Booking system is only way to get recycling centre reopened

HOW ridiculous to close Bromsgrove’s tip due to a high volume of usage.

The reason for the volume is obviously because it’s desperately needed.

All it takes is a common sense system to control the usage.

A booking system is surely a feasible solution.

Lesley Stanhope

Those shielding now have no chance of using Bromsgrove HRC

I WONDERED what provisions would be put in place for those who have been shielding for nearly five months and have not been able to go to the tip until after August 1.

We are a family of five and have been waiting patiently for shielding to be paused so we can try and return to some sort normality.

One job is disposing of waste, which has accumulated over nearly half-a-year.

Surely, those with a letter advising them to shield could take this with their tip pass from August 1?

I agree with one of the other comments on your website, why can’t Worcestershire County Council have an appointment booking system like other councils.

Brett Linton

Selfish tip-goers have spoilt it for others

I HAVE visited the Household Recycling Centre and there are very selfish people turning into the site blocking the road and muscling in on the people that had queued for approx 20 minutes.

By appointment is the only way or devise a one-way system with limited cars which wait only in a coned off area.

Someone will get seriously hurt if not.

David Coton

Too many left without help despite Chancellor’s plan

HAS Chancellor Rishi Sunak done enough?

The Jobs Retention Bonus is certainly needed, and I hope many employers bring back, and keep on, workers from furlough.

The £2billion ‘Kickstart’ scheme and £1.2billion pledge to Department for Work and Pensions are also welcome, but it may be worth asking if that £1.2billion for the DWP is purely for additional temporary Job Coaches in Job Centres around the UK.

The temporary change to stamp duty, immediately increasing the threshold to £500,000 will help some, but I think more welcome news for residential mortgage holders could have been the re-introduction of tax relief on mortgage payments. Remember that scheme? Introduced in 1983 but scrapped in 2000, it gave borrowers tax relief for interest payments on their mortgage.

I didn’t see much support for those who have ‘fallen between the cracks’.

Freelancers or those on short-term contracts are now facing unemployment.

At least some will respond to the Chancellor’s ’Eat out To Help out’ discount, but consider many who receive only state benefits may not even be able to consider ‘dining out’.

Mark Taylor

‘Global Government needed to put world right after Covid-19’

THE CORONAVIRUS crisis has forced us all to see how much we depend on vital public services, such as the NHS and social care providers, and on each other, in what has been an impressive show of community-based action.

There is a real danger that, as countries rightly take unilateral action to protect citizens, we fail to see the need for international co-operation. Like the climate emergency, this pandemic shows us no country is an island , whatever our geography.

With a US President who blames international organisations rather than fund or support them, other national leaders, including our Government, need to co-operate to offer direction and channel support to those most in need, wherever they are.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged the need for a form of global government to tackle the immediate medical emergency and ensuing economic one, in the way he helped lead the international response to the 2008 financial crisis.

He stressed the need to include nations beyond the richer G20, which will potentially suffer most. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said ‘we need solidarity, hope and political will to see this crisis through together’ with ‘a move from a country- by-country strategy to a co-ordinated global response, including helping countries less prepared to tackle the crisis.’

In medical terms, it means supplies being sent to crowded refugee camps in war-torn countries like Syria and Yemen and to the Palestinians trapped by the Israeli and Egyptian barricades in Gaza, where any Covid-19 outbreak would claim countless lives.

In economic terms, it means ensuring Western-based corporations do not cancel orders and lay off millions of workers in countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia, which have little or no unemployment or social safety net.

It means cancelling or postponing massive debt repayments from poorer countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, which exacerbate global inequality and prevent those countries emerging from poverty and supporting their citizens.

We and our Government need to apply what we have learned about mutuality and how supporting the most vulnerable is in all our interests, to international policy and our own public services and welfare system.

Mid Worcestershire Labour Party

EDITOR’S COMMENT

SURELY Worcestershire County Council realised there would be huge demand for household recycling centres once they reopened after two months.

Putting in an appointment system as part of the reopening – as other neighbouring authorities did – would have made the process more orderly and avoided the need to shut it because of overcrowding.

It needs reopening as soon as possible with slot-booking in place as the longer it is closed, the larger the demand for when it returns.