LETTER TO THE EDITOR: To those who want a better world

As this letter will be read only four days or less from the season of good cheer, I’ve decided to suspend my expected tales of doom and spend this letter saying thanks and best wishes to some people I believe deserve them.

To start, I wish a merry Xmas and a successful 2023 to the editor and staff of the Advertiser, and my thanks for the patience in accepting and publishing my letters during the past year.

Next, a happy Xmas and successful new year to the members and supporters of our local Rotherham Green Party under whose banner I write, and to any members and supporters of our Yorkshire and National Green Parties that this letter reaches.

May I also extend these same good wishes to any other social or environmental group that I am a member or supporter of.

We are all, I know, locally small in size and number, but hopefully we can, as the biblical David did, face our Goliaths and Philistines and their plans for world and national desecration, and eventually win a better and a fairer world and country, if not for ourselves then for the generations that follow.

May I also extend my good wishes for a successful outcome to the committee in my nearby town of Dinnington, their plans to revive their ailing town centre, and especially for their plans for the construction of housing estates made up entirely of affordable housing and reserved for local applicants only.

I'm sure they are only too aware of the opposition their plans will face from both the RMBC and their favoured contractors, and also from our Conservative government’s current “Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill”, both of which organisations appear to be far more concerned in maximising income and profits than in decreasing homelessness or improving the living conditions of our local population.

Next I must extend my best wishes for Xmas and the coming year to the nurses of the NHS, and wish them every success in their current industrial action.

That such a dedicated profession feels the need to take such drastic action in an effort to raise their income to above a level  so close to the minimum living wage that it is now is, an indictment not of them but of our government and the NHS Pay Review Board that is supposed to advise them.

I next extend the regrets and commiserations to the ones who recently have lost loved ones as a result of delays and inaction by the same NHS, and to wish them comfort and happier memories in future years. As a person old enough to remember its inauguration, and to experience its excellence in the early years of its life before its gradual decline under successive Conservative governments, I share your sadness at its present performance.

Also,I wish a happy Xmas and a successful new year to all who have read my letters, and a hope that something I have written has been of help or information to you.

Finally, with your indulgence, I would like to finish this Xmas letter with a short poem written over 100 years ago by a Sheffield poet, William Dowsing, that has been an inspiration to me during my past campaigns:

What should I do when my dismantled soul

Gives unto God my character and worth,

If, when He’s read the scroll, asks “This, the whole?”

“Away!, Heaven is for those who bettered Earth”

Charles David Foulstone,

Rotherham Green Party