Letters: The decline of NHS care will be on every voter’s mind during this election
SIR – Your report (May 23) says that tax, gender and security will define the general election, but with 7.6 million people on waiting lists – a significant number of them disabled and in constant pain – I suggest that the deterioration of the NHS will figure much higher than the Westminster bubble’s debates about gender.
Targets for cancer treatment and A&E waiting times that were being hit 15 years ago are now being missed, and many voters are unable to book a GP appointment within a sensible timeframe. Almost every voter knows someone who is waiting for an operation – or else they are doing so themselves.
Christopher Clayton
Waverton, Cheshire
SIR – The party that promises to dismantle the NHS, unbridle patients and doctors from its insidious bureaucracy, and restore general practice to the 1947 ideals is the only one I might ever vote for. What can be of more importance to all of us?
Philip Congdon
Sherborne, Dorset
SIR – Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, has said that Labour would ask NHS staff to work weekends (report, May 19).
Does he know what is currently happening in the NHS? Our hospital has been offering weekend clinic appointments for years. In fact I attended one at 12.45 pm last Sunday.
Julia Wilson
Rainham, Kent
SIR – Anyone who has been damaged by the NHS has very little chance of redress. I attempted to complain about the waiting time for a knee replacement, for which I was referred by a GP in December 2019 and which has still not been done.
I followed NHS England’s instructions for lodging a complaint, and got a prompt reply saying that the complaints department does not deal with complaints. I wonder how many managers are employed in this department, and why there is a misleading website saying that such a facility exists.
I am a retired hospital consultant, and pray that it was better in my day.
Frances Holly-Archer
Ellough, Suffolk
Appeasing Russia
SIR – Neville Chamberlain discovered to his cost that appeasement favoured only the aggressor. In a Commons debate last Monday, Sir Edward Leigh expressed the view that it’s extremely unlikely that Ukraine will win the war unless it is provided with weapons, not simply to defend itself, but to defeat Russia. You can’t expect to win a war by sticking to Marquess of Queensberry rules.
If Ukraine is to win, then at some point Nato must come off the fence. Sir Edward stated unequivocally that he would put British troops alongside the Ukrainians. There is little point in providing Western support unless, when push comes to shove, it helps President Zelensky’s overburdened troops to advance and keep advancing, pushing the invaders back whence they came.
The news that Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, supports US missiles being fired into Russia (report, telegraph.co.uk, May 23) is a major step in the right direction.
Doug Morrison
Tenterden, Kent
Doom with a view
SIR – One of the finest Doom paintings is the polyptych in the Hospices de Beaune in Burgundy, France.
Painted by Rogier van der Weyden in the mid-15th century and originally located in the chapel, it is now in the museum. It depicts in amazing detail the Day of Judgment, with Christ in glory above and hell below.
Peter Saunders (Letters, May 19) will not need his binoculars, as the work can now be viewed through a large, moveable magnifying glass.
Duncan Rayner
Sunningdale, Berkshire
End-of-life flare
SIR – I am full of sympathy and frustration on behalf of the gentleman who is stuck listening to Vera Lynn and playing board games in his care home (“‘I feel bored, insulted – and sick of Vera Lynn’”, Features, May 12).
If I am ever in that situation, I want to be listening to The Killers and Green Day and singing along to The Beatles and Queen. I’m 74 now and have every intention of growing old disgracefully playing rude games.
Anna Johnston
Carlisle, Cumbria
SIR – My father was in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in the war and was posted to what was then Ceylon in the early days of 1944 to be part of the British Forces Network.
He was shipped back to the UK in 1946. The day before he joined the ship he took the well-worn station copy of We’ll Meet Again by Vera Lynn and threw it as far as he could into the Indian Ocean.
J T Fillingham
Stroud, Gloucestershire
Schools and autism
SIR – Susan Pathak (Letters, May 22) writes movingly of the battles families and other carers endure while finding a school place for their autistic child.
I became a connected carer for a child with autism and other complex needs because their school closed suddenly. First, I learnt that parents and carers have to fight for every small part of an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP), even when it has been agreed after a long process. For example, if it emerges that a child needs extra care, such as one-to-one tuition for even an hour a week, the process to claim it is long and attritional.
Secondly, I hadn’t realised how interconnected the independent and state providers of such care have become. Many small independent schools now offer this service, partly to survive with falling pupil numbers. Often the EHCP mandates that the class sizes should be small, so these organisations are ideal. These are exactly the schools that will be endangered by Labour’s plan to add VAT to school fees, as they still also rely on some privately funded places.
Thirdly, many of these providers, state or independent, are financially precarious. The state-funded ones often do not have guaranteed funding very far into the future. Our independent provider merged with a similar organisation that promised to fund the school for another 30 months, but then promptly closed it while keeping the site and other assets, which it is now attempting to sell.
Incidents like this mean that an autistic child is likely to move schools far more often, which is exactly what should be avoided.
Mark Robbins
Bruton, Somerset
Reparations claims
SIR – Professor Lawrence Goldman (Comment, May 21) rightly condemns the hypocritical demand by Rev Dr Michael Banner, Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, that British taxpayers who have never owned a slave should be compelled to pay £200 billion in reparations to people who have never been enslaved.
There is a further, closely related case that curiously is never raised. Between 1944 and 1947 the British government turned over nearly a million Russians to Stalin, a proportion of whom were murdered at the points of delivery, while the remainder were despatched in cattle trucks to toil and die in Gulag camps north of the Arctic Circle. This manifestly evil policy was conducted with the full knowledge of the British governments of the day. As one of the ministers responsible for implementing the policy, future prime minister Harold Macmillan noted in his diary: “To hand them over to the Russians is condemning them to slavery, torture and probably death.”
To date, not one of the vociferous demanders that “compensation” should be paid by British taxpayers to the descendants (real or supposed) of victims of the iniquitous transatlantic slave trade has urged payment to these victims of the Yalta Agreement. Yet some of them are still alive.
The reason for this distinction has never been declared. The only explanation for this double standard that occurs to me is that the Russian victims were white. Should there be another explanation, I would be interested to hear it. Perhaps Rev Dr Banner can enlighten us.
Nikolai Tolstoy
Southmoor, Berkshire
Rider rage
SIR – It has never been more important for us all to leave our cars at home and take to our bicycles, so why are we vilifying cyclists (Letters, May 20)?
Peter Baynes
London W1
SIR – As a regular, if aging, cyclist, and therefore destined for the nethermost circle of Dante’s inferno, I see rights and wrongs on both sides of the cycling debate – though nothing that would not be helped by a smile and a little consideration.
On Tuesday, cycling on a path in the local park, I was approached by a lady of my age, eyes glued to her phone, and whose dog was cocking its leg nearby. I slowed to let her see me, pass by and reclaim the dog; she smiled, I smiled, and the dog was happy.
Tom Stubbs
Surbiton, Surrey
SIR – Responsible cyclists who complain about the need to register and have insurance “because of the behaviour of a minority” are looking at the problem from the wrong direction. They should be all in favour of these, as a way to prevent the irresponsible people from giving them a bad name.
John snook
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
SIR – Some years ago, a friend opened a bicycle shop. From the first day he refused to stock or sell Lycra, as he reasoned that it made people think they were like professional cyclists and took too many risks. The shop is still going strong 25 years later.
Brian Esson
Cambridge
A purist’s breakfast
SIR – If the stated aim of the English Breakfast Society is to “restore the tradition of the English breakfast to its former glory” (Letters, May 19), then it should consider abolishing baked beans and hash browns.
These two recent usurpers from America do not belong on a traditional plate of bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, fried bread, mushrooms and – in days of yore – kidneys.
Alan G Barstow
Onslunda, Skåne County, Sweden
SIR – In the 1970s my late father’s good friend managed the Royal Station Hotel in Hull. He referred to breakfast as a “Best”: bacon, egg, sausage and tomato. Since then I’ve considered the Best the definitive English breakfast – improved by adding fried bread.
Jayne Bugg
Coggeshall, Essex
A barrister’s wig is a symbol to be proud of
SIR – Your report (May 19) that courts may scrap “culturally insensitive” barrister wigs. Those who object to the wigs claim that there should not be any place in a modern society for “17th century fashion”. Why not?
The dress code for barristers reflects the society from which it emerged, and it is a physical demonstration of centuries of a stable system of justice of which we can all be proud. If there is a place for a document such as Magna Carta, there must be a place for wigs and gowns. Much of the legal language used in Magna Carta and on a daily basis by the self-same barristers is Latin, which predates Magna Carta itself and the origins of their costume by many centuries.
I suspect that many of those who object have taken the wrong career path if they cannot recognise the contradictions in their position.
Andrew HN Gray
Edinburgh
SIR – One object of wigs and gowns worn by judges and barristers is to obscure the person mandated to deliver impartial justice. Once the individual is apparent without the trappings of function, it is more likely that this person will be held personally responsible for any legal outcomes.
A lawyer in mufti is much more recognisable outside court and, bearing in mind the harassment and threats to MPs, an unintended consequence of dispensing with wigs and formal attire might be more harassment and assaults.
Lionel Judd
Wendover, Buckinghamshire
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