After a turbulent, troubling, and sometimes unsettling year, we can only hope for better things in 2024.
Aside from wishing for a more peaceful 12 months ahead, I think we need to care more in 2024.
And I don’t just mean in our own sector of social care, but across the world, we need to spare a thought for others who are struggling, whether that be through conflicts abroad, poverty, or the cost of living closer to home.
We can start by sparing a thought and giving thanks to all those who will be giving up their Christmas and new year celebrations to look after others and keep us all safe. As we relax, those working in social care, for the NHS, and emergency services will be pulling on their uniforms for another much-appreciated shift.
Mike Padgham
Chair, Independent Care Group
Is Sunak playing both sides?
Does anyone know what our prime minister, Rishi Sunak, really thinks about Israel’s brutal ethnic cleansing in Gaza?
One minute he’s telling Benjamin Netanyahu that “we want you to win”. The next he purports to seek a ceasefire, presumably having seen which way the wind is blowing and having heard what the grown-ups think.
I like to think we deserve better, but it’s disappointing that it even has to be said.
Beryl Wall
London
Ides of March
With Michael Gove threatening a three-month deadline for councils to produce local housing plans, it looks as though we are facing an “Ides of March” situation. As with the original event, one wonders who is going to come off worse – the councils being forced into producing unsuitable plans or the minister not able to generate adequate new homes.
What we need is a comprehensive national plan for affordable housing so that everyone – irrespective of their financial means – can have a proper home.
Andrew McLuskey
Ashford
Migrants deserve their dignity
Many people manipulate concerns around migrants to stoke racism and hatred. These people must be singled out.
Migrants face insurmountable obstacles such as widespread discrimination, xenophobia, health inequalities, marginalisation, and gender-based violence. Millions of displaced people are stranded in overcrowded, unsanitary and unhealthy shelters, without food, income, water or medicines.
What is urgently needed is a human rights-based approach that puts people’s well-being and dignity at the centre of domestic policies, practices, and laws. Only this can offer migrants the dignity and human rights they rightly deserve.
Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London
A peaceful, painless end
I recently read The Independent’s article on Dame Esther Rantzen and her registration with Dignitas.
Surveys show the majority of people in the UK would like the choice of a medically assisted death if they were suffering greatly at the end of their life. Doctors intervene in all of life’s stages, from performing heart transplants to IVF, so why can’t they use their skills to bring about a peaceful death at life’s end, if it is the patient’s stated wish?
Early Victorians believed pain relief in childbirth was a sin until Queen Victoria requested it for her births – then it became socially accepted! An increasing number of countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and some parts of the USA already allow assisted dying for terminally ill people who request it.
Many of us would enjoy our lives more if we didn’t have the concern that we may one day suffer a long, drawn-out, painful, and undignified death. Esther has long been a champion of ordinary people against officious bureaucrats, so I hope she will be allowed to choose a peaceful painless end.
Ann Wills
Middlesex
This is no longer science fiction
At least the Civil Aviation Authority recognises that the new vertical spaceport, SaxaVord, Shetland Islands, is truly a defining moment for the £17.5bn UK space sector. Indeed, it will be the first fully licensed spaceport in Western Europe capable of launching rockets vertically into space, giving the UK a leading edge in the European and global space economy.
So far, so good, but it would be a truly wasted opportunity if the UK loses the initiative to instigate the first commercial orbital power station. This is no longer science fiction, as we have had television transmissions from orbit for over 30 years, noting both systems employ the electromagnetic spectrum. It is an utter disgrace that our medieval technologically-wise, stuck-in-the-mud politicians are unbelievably putting faith in weather-dependent and unreliable large-scale wind and solar generation – and if they do succeed, then woe betide us and our technologically dependent society.
Dave Haskell
Cardigan
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