LETTER: Labour want to add fluoride to our milk

Despite assurances and promises by a succession of goverments that the NHS was “safe in their hands” etc, our experience of this safety amounted to little more than increasing the level of middle management and, of course, paperwork which often amounted to “muddle management”, with each successive government making a mess of what had been done by the previous regime.

Hi-tech equipment has become steadily more expensive, yet seems to have forgotten prevention is better and cheaper than cure.

The creation of Primary Care Trusts was certainly a step backward for democractic involvement of local people, and the running, provision and financing of health care and the amalgamation of even these PCTs into one huge body (Health North West or whatever it’s supposed to be now) was only an acceleration of this backward process, making it more labyrinthine and inpenetrable.

For example, if you want to complain about health service provision or changes after April 1st, no one can help you make a complaint. You have to rely solely on your own bureaucratic powers.

For example, how aware are you of the NHS White Paper and Health and Social Care Act and the way it’s likely to impact on your local health services and your ability to input into this period of change? If you are a concerned member of the public, you need to get involved before it’s too late.

For example, the Manchester and North West region now plans to fluoridate milk supplies and if you are concerned about this, you only have until April 1st to make your views known and become involved in the process.

It would seem the Department of Health is eager to turn Manchester into Fluoridopolis.

The coalition may wish to restore the milk Mrs Thatcher took away, but does it realise the Labour Party is anxious to add fluoride to it? Clearly whatever the Government wishes to do about health and nutrition, Labour is waiting in the wings and will attempt to poison it.

Ask your councillors and your doctor what they know of this plan and what, if anything, they plan to do about it.

Write with your views to the NHS Chief Executive at the Department of Health, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London, SWIA 2NS.

BRIAN JACKSON

Pendle FoE