THE drastic situation at Stroud Hospital is mirrored throughout the county and indeed throughout the entire country.

Local authorities and health trusts are left with the impossible task of stretching ever decreasing budgets further and further but we all know where the buck really stops... or should stop more like.

Central government apparently finds it easy to splash the cash when it comes to propping itself up, carrying out multi-million pound refurbishments for royals and Tory toffs, for building big ships and supporting the cousins over the pond whenever they feel they need to flex their muscles... it’s when people a little lower down the social order – the many – have real needs that they become tight-fisted.

Hospitals, the emergency services, care homes, schools, special educational needs care, care for people with mental health issues, people with reduced mobility, those affected by unfair fit for work assessments...those, and many more, are the areas and the people that are being betrayed by this government.

Austerity has had its day.

Using market forces as the driving force of our society for the past forty years has made most of us poorer and destroyed much of the care the Welfare State was established to provide us with.

More and more people are waking up to the fact that the nation has been conned into accepting the unacceptable for far too long.

Hopefully this weak and wobbling government will fall from its high wire before too much longer, then the process that started in June will duly be completed.

Paul Halas

Stroud