Readers' letters - March 6

Loneliness is the child of time, slow-growing and almost invisible to the naked eye, but look deeper and its roots may already be vigorous and waiting to strike. Loneliness has no smell, needs very little watering and, when it comes to nutrition, it draws its energy from the air and from the clock.Loneliness is a creeper whose habit it is to cling and what it clings to, it hurts. It is a parasite but, more than that, its foliage brings a darkness to life, no less dispossessed than that of the grave. “Why me?” A sufferer may ask. “What have I done to cause so many people to withdraw from my company?” But withdraw they have and were you to ask them why, they too would be pressured to furnish a sensible reply, save for the matter of ageism perhaps. Loneliness is a hard thorn whose seeds are sown at birth and buried like acorns, waiting to germinate, and germinate they ultimately will.Life is good and cheerfully moving along, when suddenly, society’s door slams shut in your face. Loneliness has arrived and, with it, isolation. You are no longer part of the party, no longer to be included or thought of as a worthy invitee. Loneliness has bloomed and, in that blooming, a new view of the world. A view from a room in which to sit and wait for a knock at the door that may never come. Loneliness, one might say, is in flower.Few people, it seems, recognise loneliness for what it is.Even family members may miss the vital signs, overlooking entirely how even a short visit might weaken at least one link in a chain as strong as any across the ghostly shoulders of Scrooge’s partner Jacob Marley. For that is how debilitating loneliness is, a burden that can so easily be relieved with a little love and a little precious company.Joe DawsonChorleyNHS used as a political footballWhen will politicians, both at national and local level, stop using the NHS as a political football? What is required is for all parties to come up with a joint strategy with a plan to fund it over the next 10 years. They must be open in their manifestos that this will require a small tax increase and a full review of NHS efficiency. Once agreed, politicians should leave the dedicated NHS staff to get on with the job, free from political interference. Will this happen? Of course not.The nonentities who nowadays make up the political elite of all parties know that, at some time during their political lives, they will be in opposition. A fully-funded, functioning NHS would deprive them of their biggest stick with which to beat an incumbent government. Shame on the lot of them. P Robb via email

Depositing cash into accounts

Re: Readers’ letters – February 20. Banks should provide a service for community.Even if you bank on the internet, you still need to go into most banks to deposit money into your account. Now that banks have closed a lot of their branches, it is becoming more difficult to make that deposit without travelling miles. There are ATMs everywhere to withdraw but none to pay in, yet they have them inside banks. It makes more sense to have them on the outside then those that cannot get there before the bank closes can still put money directly into their account.Gary Woodwardvia Wigan Post Facebook

Brexit Bashing Corporation

I see that the BBC (Brexit Bashing Corporation) is still at it. Evidently on the Radio 4 Today programme, there were three times as many Remain experts as there were Brexit experts.On Question Time, 60 per cent of the guest speakers were Remain supporters, 31 per cent were Brexit supporters and nine per cent had changed from Remain to supporting Brexit.This is following on from the referendum result and the General Election where the Conservatives, Labour and UKIP all campaigned to leave Europe and made up 80 per cent of the vote. Jeremy Corbyn, of course, has now done an expected U- turn.J Bunting Address suppliedIrish borderLots of rhetoric during Brexit negotiations about having to have a ‘hard’ Irish border in place after Brexit. The British Brexit negotiators tell us it is not necessary, yet Labour’s Corbyn, along with the EU negotiators, say it is. So yet again it’s the ‘bully boys’ of the EU and, unbelievably, the Labour Party, that are now putting the Good Friday agreement at risk – and not the British Brexit negotiators – by insisting the EU requires a hard border. Let the EU and their Republican puppets put one in place then, if they dare.Terry Palmer via email