Coach service needs a more central base
I’VE been a regular user of National Express for a number of years as it is the easiest way for me to get to Heathrow Airport.
However, I’ve become increasingly annoyed that we still have to get to Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, to catch the coach. There is no way that this site is fit for purpose.
On two occasions recently (a Friday and Saturday), there were gigs on in Cardiff so parking was allocated to people going to the gigs.
As the coaches operate day and night, there are times when the departure is in the middle of the night – with no trains or buses near and in a very dark and frankly dangerous setting.
The coaches are very popular, and it does a disservice to National Express and its passengers to not offer the company a better and more central base.
Sheila Vaquerizo
Barry Island
This is far from being a socialist utopia
OLDER people who rely on a meals on wheels service are urging councillors to rethink plans to axe the service to save money.
More than 300 older and housebound people use Caerphilly council’s Meals Direct, external, which is one of three subsidised services that could be cut to help save £45m over the next two years.
I never thought I’d see a Labour party putting money before people.
Proposals have also been put forward to withdraw the council subsidy from Blackwood Miners’ Institute and Llancaiach Fawr Manor House. Saving money is about choice.
Plaid Cymru group leader Lindsay Whittle has expressed concern over the long-term absence of Caerphilly council’s chief executive Christina Harrhy.
I hope history is not repeating itself. Labour councillors and chief executive sagas cost the taxpayer money and cut in services.
With the Labour government in London cutting winter fuel payments and the shambles from the Welsh Labour government, it just goes to show that having a Labour-run council, Labour MP and Labour Senedd Member is not the socialist utopia people voted for.
Labour is on track to lose votes in both council and Senedd elections. The question is, what party will hoover up those votes, with Plaid Cymru being the only socialist option?
Andrew Nutt
Bargoed
Less selfishness in age of food rationing
I GREW to manhood in Britain during World War II, when death was close to many British citizens of all ages but the majority were bound by moral principles, to welcome national rationing of food.
There were criminal spivs, black marketeers and rich profiteers, but most Britons chose to face a life of personal sacrifice, which is far above the self-obsession of today’s unworthy adult generation.
Today a friend justified to me the high price of celebrity concert tickets, and we all know of the millionaire/billionaire economics of football.
I protested that we lived in a country which he described, where many citizens and children have to live on food banks, contrasted to shared British rationing standards of my youth.
He declared he could not understand what I objected to.
I had not expected him to agree with me, but he seems mentally incapable to comprehend my beliefs concerning human society, and appears to have no beliefs beyond materialism.
He knows the facts about rationing in war time but is devoid of interest in other people, or any reason why he should care.
I have lost any power to persuade. Wartime profiteers knew they were thieves but greed replaced conscience, while today’s British adults lack any comprehension of morality in their own lives and minds.
British culture, our values to live by, was distorted by over 70 years of self-worship.
My friend is happy that some Britons own a private aeroplane, while others do not have the price of a meal.
He thinks this has nothing to do with him.
Deliberate dishonesty in all the privately-owned forms of market forces in 70 years, completely hostile to the NHS ideal that all should care for each, the common good, created the ruin of his brain.
Today’s British adults are too stupid to recognise they have thrown away the best part of human life, which Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi, Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King tried to explain.
You will not find it without their help, and your children are being poisoned.
Neville Westerman
Brynna
Incentivise students to study in Wales
I THANK Lefi Gruffudd for informing us of the scandal of the Welsh Government’s “Seren” strategy in his “Gair i Gall” column (Western Mail Weekend magazine, August 24) and would welcome the opportunity to inform a wider audience of it.
Seren is a Welsh Government funded flagship initiative that supports more able and talented students in state schools and further education colleges throughout Wales to access quality higher education and opportunities in Wales, across the UK and around the world.
Its third strategic objective states: “to advance learners’ ability to reach their potential and succeed at leading universities”.
On the face of it this seems a laudable aim until one examines what’s meant by “leading universities”.
Apart from world-wide universities at which very few of Wales’ students go on to study at, it transpires that these universities are, for the most part, the 24-member Russell Group of universities, 20 of which are in England (83.3%) with two in Scotland, one in Wales and one in Northern Ireland.
In operating the Seren initiative over the period 2018-2023, the Welsh Government has provided £2.26bn in grants and loans to Wales’ most talented students, for the most part for them to go to universities in England.
Providing financial incentives to encourage the best Welsh students
There is no way that this site is fit for purpose
Sheila Vaquerizo Barry Island
to leave Wales to study in another country or countries, thereby discriminating against the others, seems a hare-brained policy to me.
The £2.26bn would have been better spent in reducing tuition fees for all Welsh students studying at Welsh universities.
While I would certainly not be in favour of Wales’ students not having the opportunity to study at English universities (or universities in other countries), actively encouraging them to spurn Wales’ universities largely in favour of English ones, is a clear case of the Welsh Government imposing selfharm upon Wales.
With many of our best students urged by the government to move on to English universities, this will evidently deplete Welsh universities of many talented students that will result in a decidedly detrimental and harmful effect on the academic status of Welsh universities. How does this help Wales?
Moreover, many of the talented Welsh students at English universities will subsequently be tempted to seek professional posts in England, where they currently live, and they will be unlikely to return to Wales during their working life.
How does this help Wales? The interests of Wales would be far better served by the Welsh Government following the Scottish Government’s enlightened policy of no tuition fees for undergraduate-level study for Scottish students at Scottish universities (it is £9,250 per annum for them at English universities), thereby encouraging them to study at Scottish universities.
As a result 95% of Scottish university students study at Scottish universities.
The corresponding figure in Wales is only 62%. Gwyn Hopkins Llangennech