The Government is responsible for this NHS crisis and must take action

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

The NHS is facing a winter crisis (Getty)

May says it is “frustrating” and “disappointing” for us out here to have treatments cancelled. She says how we are valued by her, Hunt and the rest of her pet club.

Well May – scrap the pay cap, stop accepting huge pay rises yourselves and then telling us there’s no money tree. She is a hypocrite and if the papers want to support us, they should challenge the Government’s incompetence, their back door privatisation and put pressure on May to get rid of that inept, unqualified Hunt. They get private care, of course and it also comes to something when a Tory MP votes in favour of the pay cap when she’s been a nurse herself (Maria Caulfield).

Never mind “showing the love”, we need to fight them and their lies about the NHS: Norman Lamb has just pointed out that this is the longest period of under-funding ever. Hammond lied outright about nurses’ pay rises and he should resign like Green did. May and Hunt are despised by ALL of us in the NHS.

Dr R Kimble
Hawksworth

Social media detox

Like many other people this year, I have deleted my Facebook, Messenger and Twitter apps. Life is noticeably more pleasant.

Patrick Cosgrove
Shropshire

Pot, kettle, black

Hilarious that Toby Young should be making disparaging remarks about working class undergraduates at Oxford University being “universally unattractive” and “small (and) vaguely deformed” (”Young should be removed from government over ‘misogyny and homophobia’”). Has he looked at himself in the mirror lately?

Rob Prince
London SE13

Iran

Peyvand Khorsandi’s article (One political leader has the necessary status to intervene in the Iranian protests – it’s Jeremy Corbyn) about the situation in Iran makes the entirely unsupported claim that the Stop the War Coalition “regards the Islamic Republic as a friend in the struggle to free Palestine and as a stalwart against Western Imperialism”. Such misrepresentation is completely wrong. Stop the War does not support the Iranian government. Our opposition to intervention in Iran, either militarily or through sanctions, is because we have seen the bitter consequences of such military intervention too many times.

Stop the War has been at the forefront of opposing Western intervention in a string of countries, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria. In each case our opposition has been vindicated. Those who support these wars always want to claim that this is tantamount to supporting existing governments. This is not only misjudged, but also weakens the vital struggle against more catastrophic military adventures which do nothing to bring democracy or human rights.

With Trump in the White House, Iran is once again threatened with intervention. We will continue to campaign against this and Western backed aggression in the Middle East. We urge basic accuracy in the reporting of our campaign.

Lindsey German – Stop the War Convenor

It’s time to streamline Parliament

As our parliamentary incumbents once again insist that all public bodies should somehow find ways to do ever more with even less, apparently through the further utilisation of modern technology, I wonder whether I can be the only person who fondly envisages the streamlining of our Government by means of such cutting-edge tools.

Julian Self
Milton Keynes

Animals do not belong in zoos

Your articles on the deaths of animals in UK zoos (recent and not so recent) shine a sad light on the problems of captivity.

Organisations campaigning in this sector have shown time and again that the Zoo Licensing Act 1981 is unworkable; inspections are not being carried out or are conducted improperly. This is unsurprising as inspectors may be part of the zoos’ business system, which is intent on getting visitors through the gates to see as many sweet baby animals as possible. Conservation and education are, quite frankly, fairy stories (most species in zoos are not endangered, and there’s very little education beyond signs that people pass by very quickly).

The patas monkeys, having to be kept warm at night and at risk of electrical faults in the heating system, are on the wrong continent.

Zoos are no place for animals.

Sue Berry
Preston