PERHAPS I could comment on several reports in the Ludlow Advertiser? The budget cut now threatening to close libraries, leisure centres, and reduce all public services, will have a huge impact on the whole area, and come next election, probably result in the loss of Conservative rule.
Regarding the item on plants and herbs (Learn all about medicines from plants and herbs, Ludlow Advertiser, April 21), it is clear that nobody has heard of the 2016 Psychoactive Substances Act, that outlaws almost everything except tobacco, alcohol, tea and coffee!
Our misguided government has banned nutmeg, camomile tea, dandelion and burdock, cactus plants (they contain mescaline and 2,000 other common or garden plants that may make people “feel different “ or “high”, ie happy or better).
The act was supposed to be aimed at so called “legal highs”, designer drugs, but the effect, as in Poland and Ireland, has been to drive the trade into the hands of criminals, rather like prohibition in 1920s USA, that led to the Mafia and Al Capone’s hoodlums supplying alcohol. Introduc-ing the so-called “living wage”, (MP hails workers’ wage rise), will have a devastating effect on many small businesses, already on the verge of closure, and unemployment is the likely result, hurting taxpayers more than paying tax credits to low earners.
All in all, the future for South Shropshire is bleak, without even considering the effects of NHS cutbacks on an ageing population, by a government hell-bent on privatisation and agency management of all services, with a return to the Victorian poor law.
W F KERSWELL
Church Stretton