Reader’s letters: Euro Weekly News’ Readers letters and opinions from Spain and the UK.

Health matters
FOR the last 20 years, my wife and I have had the pleasure of travelling from our home in Humberside to spend around three months in our motor home in Benidorm.

Although I am now 70 we have still been comfortable to travel because we knew that with reciprocal health arrangements, should something happen and either of us had a medical problem in Spain that we would be cared for.

In theory, it is still possible that the UK will enter into some form of arrangement with Spain over health matters but this is no way certain.

Whilst it is possible to purchase medical insurance for holidays, to obtain something affordable for elderly travellers for a three month period is going to be expensive and with the number of insurance claims that Lloyds of London is likely to have to settle because of the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic, prices will be liable to rise even higher.

I have decided that I will do what he can to start a campaign to protect reciprocal benefits after Brexit and will be writing to my MP, the Health Minister, Prime Minister and the National Health Service.

As a regular reader, I wondered if Euro Weekly News would alert your very large following throughout Spain and the UK to say that their voices would also be welcomed by contacting their MP expressing their concern.

Kind regards
Gordon Marlow

Eureka moment
Dear Euro Weekly,
I must take issue with Leapy Lea in his rant against the Labour Party questioning whether the Tories have an exit strategy for getting the UK out of lockdown and painting a more than rosy picture that the Tories have done a wonderful job in protecting the public against the virus. I have little time for right-wing or left-wing politics, but Labour has been doing nothing more than ask what the general public, those who run shops, have offices and whose jobs are at stake have been doing – and that is what the Government see as the way out of lockdown. No doubt this week we will begin to get some answers.

As for Leapy Lea’s praise for the Tories – may I remind him that in January and the beginning of February the government did nothing – and I am sure ministers were still fixated with Brexit, as they have been for three years. During the six weeks, they could have put strict controls on our borders to keep the virus out, ordered masses of PPE and started to gear the NHS for the emergency to come. And when they did realise they had to do something they ordered a weak lockdown, nothing like we have endured in Spain and we are now seeing, day after day, the highest new infections and deaths in Europe.

For 10 years the Tories ran down the NHS and care homes. Boris needed the NHS to save his life and he had a eureka moment in realising its importance – and immigrant nurses who care for him and who his extreme right-wingers in his government would like to see jump through hoops to work in the UK.

I will, however, applaud Leapy for his comments about the role religion has played in the spread of the virus. In the Far East, both Muslims and Christians had mass religious assemblies around January and many caught the virus. Muslims went back to Iran where there is a practice of touring shrines and kissing them and Roman Catholics returned to Italy to resume kissing the marble stone of the Madonna in churches and share Communion chalices. You can just imagine how many of the “faithful” were infected and went on to infect others. Then there was a Spain v Italy football match in Milan…the rest is history.

Tony Mayes
Playa Flamenca & Sussex.

Construction criticism
Dear Euro Weekly News,
I went food shopping to Aldi in La Cala this morning, and I could not believe my eyes. 5 construction workmen came into Aldi without masks or gloves and walked around the store rubbing shoulders with each other, picking up food and putting back on the shelves with no gloves on. At the checkout, they were again shoulder to shoulder paying at the till and the Aldi assistant said nothing to them. On leaving the store and going to my car I looked across the road at the construction site and again was surprised to see workmen together, no masks, no gloves. Is this the Spanish Government putting economy before life!!

Kind Regards,
Jayne Jenna,
Costa Mijas.