OPPOSITION to the government's Health Bill is now coming from all quarters.

Last week the Royal College of Nursing passed a motion of no confidence in Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley.

And John Heyworth, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, joined a growing chorus of doctors warning that the NHS funding pressures are already hitting frontline services.

This follows last month's vote by doctors in the British Medical Association in favour of calling for a "halt to the proposed top-down reorganisation of the NHS".

Recently their chairman Hamish Meldrum said: "We believe the Bill as it is currently written is taking the NHS in England in the wrong direction.

"We have particular concerns about the emphasis on a statutory duty to promote competition in the NHS."

In March, local constituents presented Broxtowe MP Anna Soubry, a member of the Health Bill committee, with a petition to Save the NHS, signed by 180,000 people including 400 from Broxtowe (the total is now over 257,000).

Cameron has been forced to "pause" the progress of the controversial Health Bill and let's hope he is indeed listening (and not just trying to keep bad news out of the press during election time).

Meanwhile locally the changes described in the Health Bill are already well advanced.

Hundreds of primary care trust staff have taken redundancy, all staff involved in the provision of community services (health visitors, district nurses, physiotherapists, etc) in the county have been moved to new management.

GP consortia are gearing up to take control of commissioning and services are being withdrawn (such as the Stapleford walk-in centre, and day care for terminally-ill patients at Haywood House).

Come along to a public meeting on the Health Bill from 7pm-9pm on Thursday at the New Mechanics, North Sherwood Street, in Nottingham city centre.

Professor Colin Leys will speak about the threat to your health services.

He will be joined by a representative from Unison and a Nottingham GP.

Come along and find out what you can do to Save the NHS.Questions can be submitted by e-mail to killthenhsbill@gmail.com.

KAREN STAINER Denison Street Beeston

FOR many years I have had the pleasure of attending the Trowell Friday Luncheon Club and the provided transport at reasonable cost.

The club provides us with a tasty meal and social contact, and the volunteer staff provide a cheerful welcome which, is for some, the only chance of escaping the isolation of their homes.

But the council, which so often likes to play God, deems that the elderly are not worthy of any charitable consideration whatever.

In their attempts to save cash, they see the old and frail as easy targets and refuse to consider the money-draining projects so dear to them, but not to the wider population generally.

Council banquets and fruitless overseas jaunts are surely out of the question in these days of harsh frugality.

In the case of the Trowell Luncheon Club, the issue regards the ambulance transport (which has echoes elsewhere). We were informed by letter on All Fool's Day (April 1) that the transport fees were to be raised from £1 to £5, which would be laughable if it wasn't so daunting for penny-counting pensioners amid the swingeing erosion of their living standards.

Do bear in mind that we elected them to run their particular areas of responsibly and they have made a pig's ear out of it, and the weak and vulnerable are being robbed to pay for it all.

So do remember who is really responsible for the mess and use your vote accordingly.

A WALTERS Derbyshire Avenue Trowell

CAN someone please tell me where all of the taxpayers' money has gone?

When Tony Blair came to power he was reported to have in the coffers at that time £1.4 trillion, we are now in debt to the tune of £1.3 trillion.

Where did this money go to? That is not an easy amount to spend in thirteen years, £2.7 trillion.

Simon McGee in the Daily Mail (September 2009) said: "The Government has paid out nearly £170 million in interest-free crisis loans to families hit by the recession. The amount lent also increased dramatically, from £121 million in 2007-08 to £167 million in 2008-09."

There are 70 million people in the United Kingdom, which would equate to £2.43 million per person in the UK. How much of this has been paid back as a loan?

Then we have the Education Maintenance Allowance, which applied only to 16 to 19-year-old students.

It was £564 million under Labour and the new replacement, introduced by the Coalition Government, could cost more than £180 million.

With 70 million people in the entire UK that could have been £8.6 million under New Labour, and £2.57 million per person under the new administration.

Can someone please tell me why this is happening when we are seeing pensioners dying needlessly through hunger and cold-related illnesses, and successive governments are handing our taxpayers' money away on street corners and to foreign governments, which has not even been factored into my calculations.

It would appear that there has only been a slight change in the lunatics running the asylum.

How the vast majority of our MPs are millionaires is baffling to me but, of course, it is not their money, it is our money that they are spending.

Our MPs should be accountable for every penny of taxpayers' money spent.

I would like to see their pensions used as a bond.

If we like what they do on our behalf they can have it, if not, back in the coffers.

Please feel free to let me know if you can answer my questions.

If you are an MP, please do not bother; you do not have enough fingers to count more than ten, and even with your shoes and socks off it is not enough, I can assure you.

BRAD McKNIGHT Beech Avenue Netherfield

THE ongoing debate as to who is responsible for the current budget deficit must be boring your readers.

Your correspondents predictable split on partisan lines.

The two dominant viewpoints being that the deficit was caused by profligate spending by Labour, or the deficit was caused by the huge loss of tax receipts that arose from the world banking crisis.

Every political party, apart from the Conservatives, said at the General Election that the solution was to halve the deficit over four years, as that would maintain economic growth.

The Conservative policy is to remove the whole deficit in four years, solely by removing public services and tax rises.

Let us now review who was correct.

In the first six months of 2010 the UK's economy was growing, and unemployment falling.

The same is true for other countries that also adopted the "halve-the-deficit" plan. The UK switched to Osborne's "remove-the-whole-deficit" plan almost a year ago.

UK unemployment is rising again, growth is stagnating, and inflation is spiralling out of control.

I suggest that we now leave it to your readers to decide.

After all they are the ones who are losing their jobs, their savings and in time their homes.

They can express their opinion in three weeks' time at the ballot box.

ERIC GOODYER High Street Colsterworth, Lincolnshire

WHY are the public sector workers protesting over cuts?

Private employers started cutting in 2008. There were no protests, simply co-operation between staff and employers, resulting in flexible working, shorter hours and pay freezes.

The coalition cannot be blamed for the 2010/11 deficit of £145 billion.

This was purely the result of Labour throwing taxpayers' money about like confetti.

Public sector workers deserve sympathy for being conned by the Labour Government into taking jobs funded on the never never, which the taxpayer is now having to struggle to redress.

It's the incompetence of the Labour government that people should be angry about, not the attempts by the coalition to fix Labour's mess.

GRAHAM CLIPSON Jessops Lane Gedling

THERE are two conflicting principles involved in voting in any representative democracy.

Should priority be given to the qualities of the candidates as people or should their political affiliation be the more important factor?

Why could we not combine these two different principles in one electoral system?

Surely it's possible for all electors to have two votes in an election.

Half the candidates for parliament (325 at the moment) could be elected from enlarged constituencies of approximately equal populations and the remaining 325 seats would be allocated to England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales - the number of seats for each being in strict proportion to the countries' voting population.

Clearly the majority would go to England and least to Northern Ireland.

The first-past-the-post method could be used at constituency level, the candidate achieving a simple majority being elected.

The second vote would be for a particular party within the larger electoral area, the seats won being based on proportional representation of the votes cast within that area. A voter would use the first vote for his favoured candidate in his constituency and his second for his favoured party within his country, which need not be the same party as his first choice.

Totally impracticable I hear you say?

But the Germans have been using essentially this method since 1956, just about when their economic miracle started.

Surely we can't let the Germans teach us anything about democracy.

JACK MILLER Orford Avenue Radcliffe-on-Trent