Letters: NHS at 60

Patients have much cause for celebrating the 60th anniversary of the NHS. Waiting lists are down and hospitals are being renovated. Trust funding will increasingly be based on performance, postcode-based treatment is being phased out, and patients will be able to choose where they are treated, sometimes even abroad.

What a shame NHS hospital doctors have less cause for celebration. Morale is at an all-time low because of political interference. Recruitment processes for jobs are often still farcical. A shortage of consultant posts combined with a monopoly on employment means that many highly and expensively trained specialists are going abroad or quitting. The NHS continues to drown under the weight of lost paper notes and referral letters as it waits for a delayed and overpriced IT system. Junior doctors have just lost their free accommodation, with no compensation; and starting salaries for medical graduates will drop to £22,000 in August 2009, below the average for graduates as a whole.

With its attention focused on pleasing the media and public opinion, the Government has forgotten key workers who kept the NHS alive for 60 years: its hospital doctors. We are final-year medical students.

Edward Norris Cervetto, Hugo Farne

Oxford

The NHS is superb. In October 2007, I fell in London, breaking my leg and fracturing my hip.

My son took me by car to Charing Cross Hospital. I was there for 18 nights, looked after with efficiency and warmth. They then took me by ambulance back home to Devon, having liaised with a neighbour about the dimensions of my home and that it had a downstairs loo, because I had to be confined to one floor, using a Zimmer frame.

Thanks to all involved; they make the NHS what it is: superb.

Helen Taylor

Exmouth, Devon

First woman bishop was in New Zealand

Can I extend a long overdue welcome to our fellow Anglicans in England for giving equal rights to women to be bishops ("Church risks split as Synod votes to ordain women bishops", 8 July).

Your readers may not be aware but we did this in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa/New Zealand 20 years ago, in 1987. Our first woman bishop was elected in 1990 and there will be a second this year. We have never looked back. Perhaps the fact that we were the first country to give women the vote had some influence.

Russell Armitage

Diocesan Manager, Anglican Diocese of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Some people within the Church of England argue that "super-bishops" would create the type of two-tier system for male and females that would be nothing short of legalised discrimination.

Yet elsewhere within the same church others believe their religious beliefs should give them exemption from anti-discrimination legislation, particularly relating to lesbian and gay people. Can they not see the hypocrisy?

Simon White

London N4

I found the goings-on at the Synod confusing. As an atheist admittedly, I had assumed that Christians believed that the way to everlasting life was through a belief in Christ and an adherence to his teachings. I also assumed that they believe this knowledge to be divinely inspired and to be the revealed word of God.

I would have assumed, therefore, that if they believe this, they would have thought it important to spread this news. Not to do so would seem to have serious implications for those who do not believe and that the consequences would last for eternity.

So it is surprising that they have chosen not to support the active conversion of those of other faiths but have instead decided to argue about the legitimacy of having female bishops on the spurious grounds that Jesus did not choose to have any female among his Twelve Apostles.

As far as I am aware, all the Twelve Apostles were Jews. This could suggest, following a similar argument to that proposed against women, that only Jews should be made bishops. Also, Jesus did not choose any black Africans or any one from the Indian sub-continent. Where does that leave the Archbishop of York or the Bishop of Rochester?

I would have thought that any organisation that spent more time arguing about the perks of directors rather than their mission was likely to be in terminal decline.

Chris Elshaw

Headley Down, Hampshire

If a woman, that is, the Queen, can be boss of the Church of England, why is it that a woman cannot be made one of her immediate underlings, that is, a bishop?

Norman Shepherd

Durdham Park, Bristol

Wrong ideas about UK's herds of deer

Leaving aside the tenuous link to Hollywood celebs, and the strange, previously unreported habit of shooting livestock, which must infuriate local farmers, John Walsh's comments on deer management in Britain are out of place ("The killing fields", Extra, 7 July).

The UK has a higher population of deer than at any time since the Norman Conquest, and the Government is working with practically every shooting and conservation body in the country through the Deer Initiative to encourage deer management to protect sensitive habitats from deer damage. In Scotland, the Government, in the form of the Deer Commission for Scotland, actually has powers to enter property to perform deer culls where landowners are not employing proper management.

You do not need a licence to shoot deer in the UK, but to own a gun with which it is legal to shoot one you have to demonstrate experience, expertise and sanity. If only the same were true of comment writers.

Tim Bonner

Head of Media, Countryside Alliance, London SE11

The excellent article in Extra on the different species legally hunted in each European country omitted to mention one type of bloodsport closer to home.

Every year, some 40 million pheasants and partridges are purpose-bred for "sport" shooting in the UK. Breeding birds are held in battery-style cages. Contrary to popular myth, these birds are not born in the wild and their only purpose they serve is to act as feathered targets for wealthy shooters.

Kevin Mutimer

London SE15

Top-class solution to topless bottles

I share David Lister's annoyance (The Week in Arts, 5 July) at having to surrender the tops of drink bottles when attending concert venues.

Being in our mid-fifties, we very often find ourselves at the younger end of the audience age-range at concerts, as was the case with David's Neil Diamond event (which my wife and I also attended). It is unlikely someone of that age would risk being ejected from their seat (which may have cost as much as £60 or £70), by throwing a plastic bottle at the artists.

My original thought was that this policy was a cynical attempt by the venue operators to encourage concert-goers to buy from their own refreshment outlets at the usual outrageously high prices, but, more often than not, these too can only be purchased "topless".

But I find a simple solution is to bring along a spare bottle top and after relinquishing the original top, with, of course, an appropriate show of mock indignation, to the security staff, discreetly re-cap the bottle.

John House

Thatcham, Berkshire

Then again, onthe other hand

You say (Opinion, 7 July), "Even in wealthy Britain, where food makes up a paltry 9 per cent of average budgets, families are feeling the squeeze from rising food prices".

This sentence is itself an oxymoron but becomes doubly paradoxical in the light of your lead story (same day), in which you say, "The [Cabinet Office] report says UK households could save an average of £420 per year by not throwing away 4.1 million tonnes of food that could have been eaten".

There is either gloss on the statistics, or the British are uniquely stupid; possibly both?

David Smith

Clyro, Powys

MEPs are really on the right track

The main purpose of the new Brussels-Strasbourg train ("Gravy train goes deluxe for MEPs' Strasbourg trips", 7 July) is to reduce the European Parliament's carbon footprint by replacing four chartered planes used each month at present.

All EU governments decided in 1992 that the European Parliament should meet in plenary in Strasbourg 12 times a year. We believe the new train is a cost-effective and energy-efficient way of complying with Parliament's legal obligations.

Dermot Scott

Head of Office, European Parliament UK, Brussels

Vanessa Mock (letters, 7 July) writes that the Brussels/Strasbourg Thalys train fare will be €220, more than double the Intercity tariff. MEPs tend to fly, rather than travel by rail. The air fare is €472.91, or €532.91.

Stanley Crossick

Founding Chairman, European Policy Centre, Brussels

Big pay rise, but no expenses for MPs

Is it not obvious what should be done in response to the public outcry over MPs' allowances (report, 4 July)? The whole lot should be scrapped in return for a substantial pay rise. After all, the present mess was caused by keeping pay rises down in the 1980s on the grounds that the public would criticise them while putting up allowances – which increased by 50 per cent in 1986 alone – with MPs encouraged to see them as disguised salary.

A hefty pay rise, plus abolition of expenses, would do much to restore the reputation of the Commons, particularly if it was accompanied by a sharp cut in the number of MPs.

Not only would this help in dealing with the over-representation of Scotland after devolution, but with fewer MPs a substantial role would be recreated for local councillors who should anyway be dealing with the housing and other social issues which, since the Second World War, have been usurped by MPs.

Alistair Cooke

London SWI

No proof Chavez supported Farc

Your leading article of 4 July, "The end of this war is still not in sight" claimed President Hugo Chavez is "the main international supporter of note" of Farc.

Yet you provide no evidence for this and totally ignore the long-standing attempts of President Chavez to mediate peace in Colombia and to free the hostages held by Farc. You also ignore his call of 8 June on Farc to free all the hostages and end the armed conflict.

Jan O'Malley

London SW4

Briefly...

Bus lane puzzle

I can think of several poor reasons why taxis should be permitted to use bus lanes, but can anybody provide me with a good reason?

Michael Malone

New Malden, Surrey

Divine violence

I am glad Mark Steel recognises the Bible is a "grisly book", from which children should be protected. (Opinion, 9 July). Any book which claims to have been inspired or even authored by a Supreme Being will at some point be taken at its word by someone, who will be vested with the ultimate authority. Hate may not be explicitly taught at Sunday schools, but it is part of the backdrop, just as it is in madrassas: if we explain away or dismiss divinely sanctioned violence and injustice, we should not wonder why life is so cheap today.

Peter McKenna

Liverpool

Failing minister

"Neither myself nor my colleague, Ed Balls, have ever referred to failing schools", writes Jim Knight (letters, 9 July). He goes on to say that £400m has been set aside to improve standards in schools. Let us hope that the result of this expenditure will be a future minister for Schools who can tell the difference between "I", "me", and "myself".

Justin Brett

Clonakilty, Co Cork

Scot beat Darwin

Simon Usborne's article on Darwin's garden (Science and Technology, 9 July) makes me wonder if the National Trust for Scotland could take on the home and gardens of Patrick Matt-hew, in Errol near Dundee. Darwin and Wallace freely admitted that this Scottish tree expert beat them to the idea of natural selection. While Darwin's fame has rocketed, Matt-hew has been largely ignored by evolutionists and historians. Alternatively, perhaps the Scottish Executive could provide money to turn his birthplace into a national monument to Scottish ingenuity.

Dr Milton Wainwright

University of Sheffield

The washer women

Philip Moran (letters, 7 July), may be crestfallen to learn that the washing machine and the dishwasher were invented by women, Catherine Beecher and Josephine Cochran, both American housewives. Another woman, Corinne Dufour, tried her hand at inventing a vacuum cleaner, though her effort was superseded. I trust this revelation will not lead to members (and their wives) of the Church of England Synod abandoning the machines in view of their inferior provenance.

Pamela Guyatt

Tavistock, Devon

Pages of history

With the London FTSE 100 index in bear market territory, I took my Railtrack, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley share certificates up to the attic. There I found a copy of The Independent issue No 1, dated Tuesday 7 October 1986, price 25p. Perhaps your readers could advise me if this is likely to be worth more than the aforementioned papers?

Brian J Picken

Leeds, West Yorkshire