Letters: Climate chaos

New generation is inheriting a world of climate chaos

Sir: I'm 14 and have just started my GCSEs. I'm being prepared for my future. I've got my whole life ahead of me. I want the chance to be something, to make a difference. I want to see the world, but that chance is being snatched away from me, along with the rest of my generation.

Whilst we grow up our planet is being destroyed. As the cities of the world pour out more and more greenhouse gases, the time we have to save our world for the future is slipping away. It's no longer a matter of saving the coral reefs and rainforests so your children can enjoy these natural wonders, it's a matter of stopping climate change so your children and grand- children can enjoy any sort of life at all.

On Monday you reported James Lovelock's announcement that it was already too late. "We are past the point of no return," he said. We have to hope that he's wrong and we still have a little more time. But even if we do still have a chance, it's our very last one and we have to make it work this time. I hope that Lovelock's shocking statements will finally wake everyone up to the reality of our situation.

If we are going to change our ways we need world leaders to lead the way. George Bush is the leader of the country that contributes the most greenhouse gas and he has only just admitted that climate change is being caused by human actions. His (and others') failure to act is plunging the human race into a climate catastrophe.

All world leaders would agree on the importance of education in giving us all the opportunity to lead great lives. But how many would be prepared to change their policies to give the next generation the opportunity to live in a world free from freak storms, rising seas, growing desert and mass extinction?

The next generation is being handed a world of climate chaos spiralling out of control.

ISABELLE ELLIS-COCKCROFT

STROUD, GLOUCESTERSHIRE

NHS crippled by market ideology

Sir: You are right to highlight the disparity between spending on the NHS and the resulting quality of service, but utterly wrong in your editorial conclusion that more private sector medicine will provide the cure (18 January). You need only study your own reports to conclude that private sector intrusions and management methods are the cause of the problem.

Public services are always about the cost-effective provision of limited resources. This is quite different from a business that seeks to achieve profits through marketing products. Obsession with artificial internal market accountancy, with provision distorted by targets and incentives, requires layer upon layer of unnecessary management and internal budget manipulation. When you add to this profiteering by private sector parasitic activity - such as PFI schemes and contracted-out surgery - promoted for ideological purposes, the vast scale of waste becomes apparent.

The crazy logic of this pseudo-capitalism will shortly culminate in state-funded hospitals paying advertising agencies to help them out-compete their neighbouring hospitals for patients while denying the latest drugs to cancer patients.

ROGER TITCOMBE

PENNINGTON, CUMBRIA

Sir: It is not the pay of doctors and nurses that is the problem, but that of the army of bureaucrats, first created in the Thatcher era and expanding exponentially ever since.

Throughout my 40 years in the NHS, doctors and nurses were chronically underpaid, and increasingly frustrated by the diversion of funds away from clinical activities in order to service the new industry of health service administration. Until this process is reversed, there will continue to be ward closures, operation cancellation and turmoil in trusts.

JOHN TEMPERLEY MD, FRCP

BROUGHTON, LANCASHIRE

Sir: Your articles "Millions for NHS pay, but little for beds and operations" and "NHS Crisis" (18 January) in part blame staff pay for NHS financial problems. This is a red herring - NHS deficits are down to a combination of factors, including the rising costs of drugs and new technologies, and historic years of underfunding.

Like other service industries the NHS is labour-intensive: delivering an increasing range and volume of services to the public cannot be done without staff. To suggest that health service budgets have been "swallowed" by staff pay ignores the fact that staff are integral to every aspect of the NHS and patient care.

You point to pay rises for doctors. GPs do not earn an average of £100,000 from the NHS. In 2004/05 the average GP NHS income was £87,000 - under a deal where their pay is directly linked to improved care and expanded services for patients. You say that doctors' salaries are higher than many other countries, but this is not comparing like with like; for instance the UK has far fewer doctors per head of population than most industrialised countries, and GPs have much more responsibility and more diverse workloads than their European counterparts.

Doctors across the board work long hours to cut waiting times and deliver higher and higher quality care for patients. It is ridiculous to blame them for being adequately paid.

DR HAMISH MELDRUM

CHAIR, GENERAL PRACTITIONERS COMMITTEE, BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, LONDON WC1

Sir: I strongly disagree with your leader "An unhealthy service in dire need of surgery" (18 January). I recently had a much overdue major renovation of my home. While it was being done my living conditions were temporarily worse than if I had not bothered and let it decline further.

The NHS was on its knees in 1997. A massive programme of rebuilding the health service will inevitably cause some temporary strain. We should be patient and embrace the successes so far of decreased waiting times and increased staff numbers. The NHS is not in dire need of new surgery, it is already on the operating table with a competent surgeon's hand inside its belly.

SURESH PUSHPANANTHAN MRCS

LONDON N4

Pilgrim victims of Saudi bungling

Sir: I fully support Dr Hargey's idea (letter, 14 January) of establishing an international body to manage Mecca and Medina. The corrupt Saudi royal family cannot be trusted with the lives of thousands of innocent Muslims every year. Anarchy and mayhem have become regular but unfortunate features of the Haj. During the past 15 years nearly 3, 000 Muslims have lost their lives, thanks to the bungling ineptitude of the Saudi despots.

Previously the Saudis used to cover their mismanagement by saying it was the will of Allah that these poor souls should die in this manner. This time around they seem to have changed their tune and exonerated Allah but heaped the blame on the victims for their own deaths.

Secondly, it would be worth considering stopping the medieval and pagan custom of throwing stones at Satan. Islam's beliefs and principles are based on reason and common sense. The Koran enjoins the Muslims to think, ponder and reason. To indulge in a frenzied ritual assault on a fantasy Satan during the Haj, causing the deaths of so many weak and vulnerable pilgrims, is not a rational activity that enhances the image of Islam and should be stopped.

MUSHTAQUE KAYANI

LONDON NW10

We need a morality without a god

Sir: Dominic Lawson's prescription for our society is that we should force-feed our young with a set of beliefs that are too silly for Lawson to believe himself, in the hope that this will cow them into better behaviour on Saturday nights (Opinion, 17 January).

Quite apart from being revoltingly patronising, this view fails to account for the large portion of society for whom God will continue to be at best peripheral or irrelevant, and at worst implausible or absurd. We desperately need a shared set of secular values that are not based upon religious faith, but which will survive when the faith dies.

We undermine this effort every time we look to religions for moral leadership. And the religious do similar damage when they claim, illogically, that there can be no basis for morality in the absence of a god. For our values to have universal appeal, they must be rooted in our common humanity, not in the faiths that divide us.

GUS PARK

LONDON W12

The Commons at its infantile worst

Sir: Prime Minister's Questions are extremely watchable (Simon Carr, 12 January) but for differing reasons. The jeering mockery that followed Menzies Campbell's "own-goal" question on headteacher vacancies was fascinating.

As Clare Short observed, the House went into its infantile thing. And didn't the PM relish taunting Lib Dem pretenders, and rattling off his own school's dubious achievements? Parliament could well reflect on its lack of proper headteacher, and corrupt inadequate processes.

Ever the actor, Tony Blair shifts from schoolmaster to playground bully, to unctuous vicar, to knockabout mate, while smooth David Cameron rarely rises above the sixth-form debating level that seduced his party conference, and looks ever the head boy in waiting. At least decent Charles Kennedy, for all his lapse and flaw, showed maturity and dignity. We can hope that more MPs will bring wisdom and gravitas to bear on our democracy. The public want to see grown up politics.

Otherwise, in the voyeurism league, the PMQ slot runs a close second to Celebrity Big Brother.

DAVID MCDONALD

SLOUGH

Mini-brothels mean hell for neighbours

Sir: You report the Home Office minister Fiona Mactaggart insisting that " 'mini-brothels' could be run without offending neighbours" (18 January).

Two prostitutes and no pimps or pushers, according to Mactaggart, each serving about 10 punters daily. That means 40 movements, day and night, perhaps using a shared main entrance or an adjacent front door, by the type of person who buys sex. I cannot see how neighbours could not be desperately "offended" if not terrified by this. It would be horrific having to explain to children who the punters were.

In our south London neighbourhood a housing association started putting "vulnerable" people into a residential area. The immediate result was that their pimps and pushers found them and provided drugs in return for the use of their accommodation as crack houses and brothels. This is inevitably what would happen if street prostitutes - mostly drug users - moved into mini-brothels. Many local families in my area, some of whose school-aged daughters were propositioned, gave up and moved.

Mactaggart's proposals will only spread the areas in which prostitutes operate. They are a perfect recipe for making innocent people's lives hell.

PETER SPRING

LONDON SW2

Sir: I cannot agree with your view that managed zones are the most effective way of dealing with prostitution ("Such a timid liberalisation", 18 January). From my experience of working with "sex workers", I know that the overwhelming majority have been victims of sexual abuse and are usually addicted to heroin and/or crack. They are easy prey to every type of abuser, from violent pimps to drug dealers to violent punters. Managed zones would take the women out of the way of "nimbies" and conceal them from the public eye. They would be facing the same type of "clients", and would still be drug-addicted and vulnerable.

I believe that Fiona Mactaggart's initiative is a step in the right direction, as it should free women from the control of pimps, and they can be visited by the professionals that they need support from - social workers, drug workers, nurses.

I agree with educating the men who exploit sex workers by making them aware of trafficking and informing them that the women will more than likely have grown up in care or in abusive homes. However, as men use prostitutes for a specific reason - to exert power over a weak and vulnerable person, much as rapists do - I would favour confiscating their driving licences and publishing their names in the press.

Let's offer sex workers a way out of their rut and in to work and education.

PAUL BROWN

LONDON N8

No laughing matter

Sir: I'm confused. You report that a laugh a day will keep the heart attack at bay (17 January) and even trumpet this in your leader, so why do you try to kill off your readers with continually depressing front covers?

GARRY TAYLOR

BRACKNELL, BERKSHIRE

Miscasting

Sir: Paul Taylor gave us a nice review (17 January) for our reading of John Osborne's The Entertainer at the Royal Court Theatre, for which many thanks. May I gently point out that I, and not Sam West, played Archie Rice's dad, Billy? Mr West is currently, and with great success I understand, running the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield. But he is a fine actor, so maybe I should just keep quiet.

SAM KELLY

TWICKENHAM, MIDDLESEX

Tesco expansion

Sir: Every day independent retailers are suffering loss of business due to Tesco's aggressive expansion. ("Tesco 'bullies councils to get its way' ", 16 January). Tesco has yet again produced record sales figures and is reported to have experienced its most successful Christmas period. We have to take this seriously and understand that it will have long-term effects on British retailing. Is it not time for the Government to introduce an independent regulator to control supermarket expansion?

KEITH VAZ MP

(LEICESTER E, LAB) HOUSE OF COMMONS

Politics on the doorstep

Sir: Bruce Anderson's article "Does the Liberal party still have a reason to exist?" (16 January) was good knockabout. Anderson has certainly done some of his homework: asking "experienced Labour and Tory canvassers" what they made of Liberal Democrat canvassing methods. Let him now complete his homework by asking Liberal Democrat canvassers what they think of Tory and Labour tactics. His subsequent show-and-tell will give us another good laugh.

PHIL COOK

WESTBURY, WILTSHIRE

Unseasonal greeting

Sir: On 16 January I received an expensive-looking brochure with on its front cover the message "Christmas is coming. Get ready with our festive gift guide". I am uncertain whether this is pathetically late or bracingly early. Now for the first cuckoo.

PHILIP N O'DONOGHUE

NEW BARNET, HERTFORDSHIRE