London Street tunnels

Dear Editor,

I was very interested to read in your paper about the underground tunnels in Andover.

I lived at 16 London Street for many years, next to Pearman the blacksmith. We had a brick tunnel entrance in the cellar and it always felt creepy when going down the cellar to fetch a bucket of coal or to put coins in the meter.

The entrance wasn’t bricked up, just a black hole ; although intriguing, my brother John and I were never brave enough to see where it led.

My foster father rented land from LLoyds Bank where he grew vegetables for the family, which he sold to Lewington’s in George Yard and to the Star and Garter Hotel.

He kept his garden tools etc in the brick and flint summerhouse which was mentioned in the article.

I often wondered if ‘our’ tunnel linked to the summer house and then to St Marys Church. My brother and in our young minds thought so, for people to hide and to travel unseen, monks maybe?

Jane Mitchell, Charlton

PM must go

Dear Editor,

Boris Johnson must go. The sooner the better. Hopefully by the time this letter is published. Serial lying, false apologies and the inability to take responsibility are behaviours that Johnson has consistently produced in his careers as journalist and politician. Unfortunately for the country, these are not the behaviours needed for our Prime Minister.

At risk is not just the reputation of a tarnished Conservative Party but also the foundations of our strong liberal democracy. Johnson has a sense of entitlement worthy of a decadent Roman emperor. Any potential threats to curtailing his power are attacked. Over the last couple of years, we have seen attempts to reduce parliament to a rubber stamp, attacks on judges and the rule of law, and more recently the BBC because it dared to shine a light on the party gate scandals. In the real world, outside the Number 10 party bubble, people are questioning why rules apply to them but not to the Downing St self-appointed elite. People are looking with disbelief at Johnson’s antics and his sense of entitlement.

Being a former electoral asset is all very well, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Delivery of competent government has not been a Johnson strong point. Brexit is still not sorted out, immigration still a problem, the cost of living has not gone away, and energy prices are increasing. I am sure that there will be a whole wage of populist policies, many of which reek of desperation, but there will be a lack of good solid competent policy which is what government is all about.

Johnson must go. He is a rule breaker and incompetent Prime Minister. He should do the country and all of us a favour.

Cllr Luigi Gregori

Back off our posties

Dear Editor,

I wish everyone would stop complaining about poor delivery service.

My daughter is a post lady, has been for 37 years (still is). She worked very hard through lockdowns, as other posties did, even working days off to cover for those off sick.

The past seven weeks leading up to Christmas, she worked six days a week, longer hours to help clear backlogs of mail.

She is highly respected as a postie in the village where she delivers and goes out of her way to help others.

I too am waiting for delayed mail, so please spare a thought for our posties out in all weathers to deliver mail.

Have a go if you think you could do better.

Name and address supplied

Private providers profiting

Dear Editor,

This country’s public resources are, increasingly, owned by private companies. The Andover Advertiser does a great job of showing why that matters, focusing on water and waste. This murky tale of sewage dumping, neglected infrastructure, and payments to shareholders shows why John Stuart Mill was right when he warned that privatising natural monopolies, such as water, would allow private companies to make excessive profits from their captive consumers. Compare privatised English water companies with publicly owned Scottish Water, and we can see that the latter charges its users about 14% less than its English equivalents. It has reduced its level of debt since 2009, and does not pay out dividends.

Another area where public resources have been privatised is health. The Health and Care Bill going through Parliament finalises plans to create 42 Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), each serving 2-3 million people. Private healthcare companies will be represented on their Boards and the NHS contracts they hand out will not have to be tendered but can go to any contractor, regardless of track record. They will not be accountable to the populations they serve, and will have to make cuts to services, including closing hospitals and reducing patient access to care. There will no longer be a national entitlement to a full range of services.

We can predict what this means by looking to a recent report by Spire Healthcare, who will be among the private companies to be represented on the Boards of these Care Systems. In it, they gloat: ‘The overall positive dynamics in our market…have not changed – especially with lengthening waiting lists and significant demand in both the NHS and private sector resulting from the postponement of elective procedures.’

It seems Covid-19 may have created the perfect opportunity for private providers to bolster their profits from the 1.2 million people on NHS waiting lists. We have all seen the exhausted faces of demoralised NHS staff on news reports, while the Government claim that companies like Spire are saving the NHS and have signed an agreement that could see the NHS spend up to £1 billion more on private providers over the next four years. I wonder how the cost of this to the taxpayer can be justified. Surely money would have been better spent on the NHS directly. After all, it is the NHS, which we pay for, that trains, insures and employs the staff who work for these private companies.

How right John Stuart Mill was about privatisation. Is there a political party that will turn the tide of sewage pollution and stamp out the parasites that feed off our NHS?

Alison Vaspe, Anna Valley