Letters: GPs' hours

Sir: Current arguments between government and the British Medical Association on the provision of GP services suffer from a conflict of motives and neglect facts.

The Government wishes GPs to be available for three more hours per week, in the evenings and at weekends "in order to enable the working population to consult out of working hours". This is a strange demand. The majority of consultations with general practice are made by the elderly and by children. Neither of these two groups are at work.

Consultations with general practitioners are made because one is ill, particularly acute respiratory infections, or one has symptoms which cause concern. In both instances time off work should not be a problem and is in fact desirable to prevent the spread of infection.

In the past, general practitioners provided continuing 24-hour care and prided themselves on their knowledge of the problems of their patients. Home visits were common, both for those patients with an acute illness and for those with a disabling, chronic condition.

Society has changed, GPs feel that they should only work set hours, and emergency "out of hours" care be provided by deputising agencies. Patients consider that a visit to the GP should resemble a visit to a supermarket and GP services should be available based on demand rather than need. Government reacts to perceived pressure as voiced by the media and its advisers, many of whom are mesmerised by models of care in the USA and the desire for private profit.

There are major problems in this country in the provision of services for health. Inequalities in the quality of health services persist both between and within geographic areas and institutions. Inequality in health status between different areas, measured by, for example, infant mortality, have deteriorated. Current proposals are unlikely to have any effect on these major problems and may even make them worse, particularly if American models of health service provision are followed.

I am perplexed that we continue to be distracted by populist issues rather than tackling the fundamental problems.

Walter Holland

Emeritus Professor of Public Health Medicine, Twickenham, Middlesex

Conway reveals a much deeper ill

Sir: I really don't understand all the fuss about Derek Conway making payments to his family.

When the House of Commons sacked the sleaze watchdog Elizabeth Filkin (their own appointee) in 2001 it was made abundantly clear that the House had no intention of changing its ways.

The Derek Conway affair is merely a completely understandable and easily anticipated symptom of a much deeper problem; The institutionalised acceptance of the principle that politicians in Westminster make the law but are in no way subject to it.

Forget about Mr Conway, it is the Mother of Parliaments that needs to be brought in to line and if this cannot be done then, like even the best of mothers, she must give way to a new generation. In this instance, a democratic forum that can uphold the principles of democracy and not those of a secret brotherhood more reminiscent of the Mafia.

Michael William Collings

Sutton, Surrey

Sir: We have to remember that Mr Conway was elected as a Conservative. His party supports the free-market economy, as exemplified by the public company.

Anyone who has spent time in the upper reaches of one of these will know that for some directors the company's money is their own, to be used to pay for personal and household expenses and holidays. This is where the practice of "no questions asked" expense claims originates.

Leon Williams

St Margarets Bay, kent

Sir: My MP, Derek Conway, obviously had to go. My only words of balance, therefore, are to point out that a quick look at theyworkforyou.com (work for who?) reveals that Mr Conway at least had a strong voting record for investigating our illegal invasion of Iraq.

More than can be said for many in the pathetic, money-grabbing, corrupt collective of swindlers we have for elected "representatives".

Simon Barker

Sidcup, Kent

Sir: With the demise of their father's political career, perhaps Henry and Freddie Conway could seek gainful employment as researchers in Peter Hain's "think tank" – the workload would appear to be of a similar weight.

Ian Partridge

Bradford

Sir: What the married MPs Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton have done with their property being in trust, then paying rent on it and claiming that back (report, 4 February) might well be within the rules, but that does not make it right.

It is ultimately the public who are paying the rent to bolster the property trust. The rules relating to MPs claiming rent against a property need to be reviewed.

Laurence Williams

Hockwold, Norfolk

Sir: There is a principle in social security legislation that, should you deprive yourself of an asset with a view to retaining welfare benefits, then the means-tested benefits are withdrawn. Should not the same apply to Members of Parliament – particularly Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton?

Moreover, why not means test MPs' allowances? Do those who earn large sums from outside interests really need the same allowance as those who devote themselves solely to Parliament?

Kevin Harper

Ashford, Kent

Sir: Originally, MPs were not paid. That meant that only rich people or those in the pay of the rich, could afford to be MPs. So we decided to pay them a living wage so that anyone with the passion to serve their community could follow their chosen vocation.

Remembering that the average salary in this country is in the order of £25,000 a year, why do we pay our MPs so much? For most of us, a living wage is at or below the national average, so why pay our MPs so much more?

Do we think that they are worth it, or is it simply that we feel we have to bribe them to be honest by paying them so much to follow their vocation?

Tony Pattison

Darlington

Don't forget the comet peril

Sir: Your "Big Question" article (30 January), on the dangers of asteroid impact, too easily brushes aside the danger from comets. Whilst impacts from asteroid debris may be more frequent, none of these are likely to be Extinction Level Events (albeit that they may be bad news).

Comets, on the other hand, do represent an ELE threat. Indeed, during our lifetime, we have witnessed a string of cometary blocks crashing into Jupiter (some the size of Everest) which, had they hit Earth, would have been quite catastrophic.

Furthermore, comets coming in from deep space only become detectable when they are a few years out. And only nuclear devices would then stand any chance of deflecting them in time. The idea would not to be to shatter them so much as (by detonating to their side) to deflect the mass (shattered or not) away from the Earth. Humans could now do this.

I suggest that one reason humans are here is luck. It got close, for all life, when dinosaurs went extinct. Perhaps, elsewhere, life has not been so lucky. But, maybe, the time has come for us to become an adult species ...

Ian Kirk

Cheadle, Cheshire

Mayor was kept out of Tube decisions

Sir: In your editorial comment (January 26) you list management of the Tube as one of the areas where Ken Livingstone has failed to deliver as Mayor of London. However, this is not really his fault.

When the post of London Mayor was being established, the Department for Transport was in the process of setting up the 30-year Public-Private Partnership for maintenance and modernisation of the London Underground infrastructure. The complex structure was largely created by the Treasury's private finance team – notably special adviser (now Baroness) Shriti Vadera. Control of LU was specifically excluded from the Mayor's remit until the contracts were irreversibly signed, as several first-round candidates (not just Livingstone) had expressed doubts about the PPP concept.

When responsibility for the Underground was transferred to the Mayor, Livingstone insisted on extra government guarantees to protect London's council-tax payers as far as possible. He brought in experienced transport professionals to try and make the PPP formula work, but could not prevent the private-sector from backing out when the fragmented structure began to unravel.

Much of the Tube network is now more than 100 years old, and after many years of stop-go funding, the London Underground network needed substantial investment for modernisation as well as capacity expansion. The PPP process did at least force the Treasury to sign up to long-term financing commitments, and we can only hope that the Metronet administration will not bring a premature halt to this essential work.

Chris Jackson

Editor, Railway Gazette International, Sutton, Surrey

Teaching in state and private schools

Sir: I am getting so tired of the treatment meted out to comprehensive schools in your newspaper. The allegation that state school teachers are inferior to those who teach in the private sector is one that particularly bothers me.

I teach art in a London comprehensive and would probably find it less stressful if the only students I taught were those of the well-motivated middle classes.

Instead, I have to deal with pupils whose behavioural difficulties include destroying work in my classroom, breaking resources and swearing at me in front of the rest of the class.

I have to teach students who arrived in the country five minutes ago with no words of English (often the nicest children).

I have to teach 11-year-olds who are tired and unhappy because their single mother leaves them alone every night while she works a 12-hour night shift at a hospital several bus journeys away.

Despite all this, my students finish KS3 art with an understanding of chiaroscuro, the Renaissance, Cubism, Modernism in architecture, pre-European art in Africa and a host of other advanced topics. I would challenge any public school teacher to work so effectively in the conditions that I, and my colleagues, experience. I don't think they'd be up to the job.

Matthew Astrop

London N6

Sir: I can be silent no longer. I suggest two educational scenarios, exaggerated for clarity (Letters, 1 February).

In the first, private education is abolished. Highly motivated children of highly motivated parents descend on what were problem schools. The dispossessed hoodies are overwhelmed. They abandon their gangs, and immerse themselves in Greek and the higher mathematics. Universities rejoice in a flow of well-taught students. The whole country blossoms.

In the second, private schools are again abolished. But now ambitious and successful parents take one look at the local school and move. The country is geographically divided into the haves and the have-nots as never before. Vast urban areas become human sinks; the schools cannot teach; the teachers go. The cost of a good education rises very sharply, the cash going into house prices, and not into education.

The question to which we must address our minds is the extent to which one of these scenarios would prove the truer. It would help if you could try to steer the debate away from those people who assume, without observable pause for thought, that one of these scenarios is the truth.

C R Leedham-Green

Professor of Pure Mathematics, Queen Mary,University of London

When torture works

Sir: Interesting that on the day you begin the Great Philosophers series (2 February) Robert Fisk should try to argue against torture from historical instances of its failure. Opponents will simply quote Guy Fawkes and other examples where prisoners have spilt the beans under duress. What he has got to do is make the moral argument: use only reasoned appeals to discover which primary school the suicide bomber is heading for.

Gerry Watson

Peterborough

The first blue eyes

Sir: I was interested to read your report (31 January) that all blue-eyed people are descended from one individual who lived about 10,000 years ago. The report should have pointed out that the gene for blue eyes is recessive, so the individual in whom the mutation arose would have been brown-eyed. Blue eyes would not have appeared until much later, when two descendants of that individual mated to produce an offspring with two copies of the mutant gene.

Dr Richard Palmer

Bristol

Forced marriages

Sir: Following your report "Mystery of Bradford's missing children: were they forced into marriages abroad?" (4 February), may I invite the Bradford local education authority to make clear that it will now insist that its schools display relevant advice posters, and that its teachers demonstrate that they have read and will follow the Forced Marriage Unit guidelines? With the welfare and happiness of vulnerable young people at risk, I am astonished at having to write this letter.

David Crawford

Bickley, Kent

Crime families

Sir: I was concerned by your article "Jailing mothers 'damaged a generation' " (30 January). In this you say children of jailed mothers are more likely to be convicted of a crime and to serve probation than other children. Could this be because mothers (or fathers for that matter) who are criminals themselves are likely to be more tolerant of crime in their children? Surely these children are only following their parent's bad example?

MARC HURSTFIELD

NorthfleetKent

Mice with colds

Sir: So scientists have inflicted the common cold virus on the poor old mouse (report, 4 February). What other human frailties will they be subjected to? Binge drinking and obesity would be a good start.

Ivor Yeloff

Norwich