‘Icy streets of shame’ and lessons for saving A&E

• IN the New Journal of February 6 2003 a leader was headed “Icy streets of shame”.
It strongly criticised the council’s failure to grit pavements etc and noted that nearly 150 men, women and children had to be treated for fractures or serious bruises in accident and emergency departments at Camden hospitals.
Councillor John Thane replied that the council did not have to grit the roads and pavements and I am sure the present council, wearing a different coloured livery, will reply in the same way.
However, it is the number of people needing to attend the A&E departments that should make the Health Secretary’s page boys think again and again about “savings” and closures.
The primary “saving” of a hospital is that of human life – not the cuts that lobbyists like the CBI, for example, are pushing for over SW1 lunches.
BOB DAVENPORT,
WC1

Ill-prepared

• WHOOPS more snow! Was Camden Council yet again ignorant to the predicted weather forecast?
Most people would say once bitten twice shy.
But yet again it seems Camden are surprised at its arrival and are ill-prepared to cope with the snow and ice. Maybe, just maybe, Camden put this down to the wrong type of snow – an excuse commonly used by our transport service providers.
People are left to fend for themselves with the hazardous pavement and communal areas on large estates.
Instead Camden’s street contractors were out on Thursday at 6:45am in Malden Road, trying to sweep litter from the kerbside. The employee, clearly frustrated by his endless efforts to penetrate the ice surface with his broom, eventually gave up and walked away.
Surely someone within Camden and the contractors’ office would have had the common sense to encourage them to grit the pedestrian footpaths instead. 
The council and the winter planners should be ashamed of themselves for the non-service delivery.
It’s true Camden’s motto of  “cheaper is better” is flawed and cannot be considered to the people of Camden as value for money.
I strongly believe that a full public inquiry should be held into Camden’s inability to deal with safe passage.
Come on Camden, get your act together.
You’re selling public assets like sweeties. Try giving something back like a bit of grit instead of the invidious likelihood of broken bones for us the residents.
T. WIGGETT
Denton Estate, NW1

Priorities

• THE big snow fall last week was on Wednesday morning. 
Yet pavements across the borough north of Euston Road remained highly treacherous several days later.
We could and should ask why and the answer is national guidance, which requires priority be given to roads.
I can certainly agree that all roads used by buses, including the ones from suburban garages to bus routes, should be number one priority but thereafter, to my mind, national policy is facing the wrong way for Camden.
We’re an unusual borough in that nearly 60 per cent of homes do not have use of a car. 
I’d hazard a guess that 99 per cent of broken bones treated by accident and emergency in the last fortnight were pedestrians falling on ice, with negligible numbers of motorists.
If cars bash into each other on icy residential side-streets, so what – it’s not serious and should they be driving in hazardous conditions anyway?
Let the driver beware and responsible for his or her own actions. Many thousands of our residents have been prisoners in their homes and dared not venture out of their front doors for days for fear of falling.
We need to change the priority in Camden from cars to pedestrians and to hell with national guidance.
Putting traffic wardens to work clearing pavements would have been a good start.
CLLR PAUL BRAITHWAITE
Liberal Dem, Cantelowes ward

Frustration

• I WRITE to echo frustrations expressed to me by dozens of local people about the compacted ice being left on side street pavements by Camden Council for days, until finally nature takes its course.
When I look across the boarder to Islington, Barnet and Westminster, why is it that those councils have managed to grit all their pavements?
Despite the accurate weather warnings, why does our council fail to take steps to ensure adequate manpower and resources are in place?
Why do television documentaries insist we would have to pay more council tax to be better prepared for this sort of weather, when Scandinavian countries have a track record of paying less tax?
MERIC APAK
Royal College Street, NW1