If ministers relied on the NHS, would they treat it with such contempt?

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Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary (right), visits University College Hospital (Getty)

This morning The Independent tells us about the Health Secretary’s collusion with the “independent” Health Education England about bullying the junior doctors, then this evening the TV news is telling us that A&E services are in crisis. Now, I may not be a politician, but anyone can see that a health minister who starves the system (to which we all contribute as soon as we start to work), so that he can introduce privatisation as a way of solving the crisis that he created, is not really suitable for the role he has been given.

Bearing in mind that our unelected Prime Minister is doing nothing to intervene, then it must be assumed that she is happy with what he is doing. I can see why, as should any of them be taken ill there will be a flying squad escorting the ambulance to a private hospital where a consultant or two will be hovering around their beds to attend to them. There’ll be no long waits in A&E, no trolleys in a corridor for several hours, and a wait for a bed. In other words, not the service we may experience should we be taken ill.

Ministers are quick to condemn the actions of rail workers, but seem not to realise that what they are doing is in utter contempt of every person in the country who doesn’t want the NHS privatised. I think that apart from ministers and private medical company directors, that would be everyone else.

If funding is a problem then maybe international aid (Mr Cameron's attempt at being a world player) should be de-ring-fenced and the NHS ring-fenced and protected from privatisation for ever. These ministers who aspire to know better than the people they represent should start listening to them.

Ken Twiss, Yarm, Cleveland

Remainers lost a battle, not the war

The Brexiteers think the 16 million who voted to remain are losers who can glibly be ignored if they don’t knuckle under. The intransigent Remainers, and those who may join them as the economic situation degrades as it may well, have a right to be heard and could be organised into a potent force.

Since in Parliament only the SNP feels able to oppose Brexit, it is time for a new centrist party that would boldly campaign at parliamentary elections for a return to and reform of the EU. We get back in there and clean it up. I propose that this new party be called the Moderates which abbreviates pleasingly to the Mods. We Remainers or Mods should take heart from the words of de Gaulle in another dark time: “We have lost a battle but we have not lost the war.”

Patrick Vidaud, London

Ben Chu argues that economists were not wrong to predict a downturn after the Brexit vote because they are now forecasting a downturn next year. Isn’t the flaw in this argument rather obvious?

Hugh Murray, Newmarket

Welcome to the real world that the rest of us are living in. Civil servants do not like how the public voted in the referendum. Tough. I do not like top civil servants getting gongs for (a) doing their job and (b) doing the job badly. Not much I can do about it.

I do not like civil servants continuing to enjoy expensive final salary pensions when most in the private sector have to make do with defined-contribution pensions. Again, not much I can do about it.

If civil servants are not happy, do what the rest of us do. Leave, and do something else.

Philip Pound, Sydenham, London

Political strike

Yesterday I watched an interview with Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, about the rail industrial action. As usual he said the action was “political”. Well, so is his use of this word to try and demonise these staff. He must think we're all stupid if he thinks we can’t see through his game playing. At least those staff are actually qualified to do their job, unlike him, with no background whatsoever in this area.

R Kimble, Hawksworth

Barack Obama's legacy

President Obama's record of partisan politics at home allied to diplomatic blunders abroad leave a weakened, divided nation, a controversial health service and a Democratic Party in meltdown.

An unfocused $1tn stimulus left unsafe roads and bridges, old school buildings, no nationwide smart grid to prevent blackouts and no real defence against cyber-terrorist attacks.

Hijacked by radical “greens” he over-hyped global warming, demonised fossil fuel, blocked pipelines, delayed drilling platforms and held back the Midwestern economic recovery.

His actions in Libya, Egypt, Iran and Syria were disastrous while his bickering with President Putin and weakness before Chinese and North Korean aggression was lamentable.

John Cameron, St Andrews

Is the end nigh?

I’m totally bewildered. An obnoxious braggart and bully is about to become President of the United States. A kind, thoroughly decent man, Jeremy Corbyn, who wants (among many other laudable aims) to see a fairer society, is rubbished by his own party and consequently the electorate.

It has been proved that Russian hackers interfered with the US election to the detriment of Hillary Clinton, but still the result seems to stand. Why isn't the election being pronounced invalid, and re-run?

The world is sinking under the weight of the huge and destructive human population. Species as visible and developed as elephants, lemurs, orangutans, giraffes and rhino are on the edge of extinction, great sheets of ice are breaking away in Antarctica, global warming is increasing, and yet people continue to produce large families with pride.

I feel as though the prophesies in the Book of Revelation are coming true. Can somebody please explain why everything is so violently out of control? Is there any hope?

Penny Little, Great Haseley, Oxfordshire

Universities cannot make up for poor schools

The Editorial on 7 January (“Despite social mobility initiatives, Britain is going backwards”) emphasises again that while politicians may make mistakes, being wrong is not normally one of them.

Expecting universities to make up the ground lost by schools in poorer areas both in terms of academic achievement and ambition is just typical. It is an admission that the state is failing to provide many of our children with the education to which they and the nation as a whole expect. If this were not so, universities would have no problem achieving a balanced intake of students from all backgrounds.

As it is, of course, the logical way for a university to meet Alan Milburn’s demands and retain its £9,000 per year is to dumb down its courses. Not the solution I assume he is looking for.

Instead of beating up the universities for their admissions, the Government should address the root causes of this problem, the low standards and ambition in many state schools, and stop wasting time and effort looking for someone else to blame.

Jerry Wallwork, Leicester

Devolved immigration control

I can only shake my head in disbelief at the recommendation of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration that a commission should be set up to examine how a devolved immigration system might work.

Control of immigration is a core state function. The architects of the European Union knew this, which is why Eurocrats have always been so obsessed with undermining national borders. Indeed, it was this issue more than any other that led to the vote for Brexit in last summer's referendum.

Great Britain is an island, surrounded by seas and the Atlantic Ocean. It is in the best interests of everyone on this island that it has a single immigration system, a single security policy and indeed a single integrated defence.

If immigration policy were devolved to Holyrood, the SNP would simply use it as another method to promote their separatist agenda. They would take great pleasure in running an ultra-liberal policy, calculating that nothing could be more guaranteed to provoke English and Welsh voters who want immigration strictly limited.

Otto Inglis, Edinburgh