So here we are.

Yet another political election with the same main political parties sweet-talking us for our support and asking us to yet again vote them back into power.

Strong leadership is fine but we the voters really expect them to deliver us a modicum of positive support with public services.

Let none of them tell you that in general, public services are gradually improving over time because they are most certainly not.

The same council tax priced fortnightly bin collection has halved its service from the previous weekly service but for the same tax.

The police service is nigh on invisible to the public, but it is the present state of the NHS that is the area of most concern.

Our NHS hospitals have become health factories and largely hive off private specialist health areas within or near the factory complex.

They have indeed become more efficient, if the yardstick to use is volumes of scale and a conveyor belt attitude.

In the main hospitals are greatly improved in treatment and procedures and much more efficient than they were 30 or 40 years ago. However, sometimes they are like banks that are too big to fail and think saying sorry exonerates them.

For me the big deterioration in the NHS is in the services provided by GPs and local medical centres which appears woeful to many patients. This can be observed from the earnest letters on the difficulties of getting to see a doctor in Maldon as published far too often in the Standard.

30 years ago, near on anyone could get an appointment that day often with their preferred doctor and even home visits were not uncommon. Now to get a doctors’ appointment appears to be beyond my own natural ability as my infrequent attempts usually end in me phoning NHS 111 for advice.

At my latest attempt, the receptionist offered me an appointment in 33 days. They mentioned Colchester Hospital as a possibility.

Being of a certain age, I have enquired from retired medical professions on why the NHS local service has deteriorated over the past 30 years and their answer is because there are many more people to treat. Having lived in Maldon for over 45 years I have see the population roughly double in size but then medical centres and indeed doctors have also more than doubled in size and the NHS budget increased by three times or more. Something is badly wrong and surely it’s about time it was put right again by the paymaster politicians.

F J Bermingham The Mallows Maldon