If the government wants to save NHS money while saving lives it should tackle deep vein thrombosis

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Like many, I was thrilled to hear the chancellor promise funds to the NHS as part of his Budget announcement. However, the government could wipe almost £200m off the NHS bill if it tackled the condition that almost killed me.

I nearly died when a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) I sustained in my lower limb after a tennis injury travelled through my heart to my lungs, causing a massive pulmonary embolism (PE). Both conditions are easily preventable.

According to Thrombosis UK, blood clots kill more people in the UK and US each year than AIDS, breast cancer, prostate cancer and motor vehicle crashes combined.

It is also estimated that up to 60 per cent of cases in the UK occur during or after hospitalisation, making it one of the leading preventable causes of hospital deaths. A no-brainer for the NHS.

By reviewing the current situation, backing vital research and product development, and looking into raising awareness, the government could help save lives while saving money.

We all know the NHS is struggling and we have all been waiting a long time to find out how this government intends to support it going forward.

But by tackling conditions like DVT, we could shave off a huge amount of unnecessary expenditure.

Paul Westerman
Director, RBR Active

Alternative ideas for the 50p Brexit coin

That the government should see fit to “commemorate” Brexit with a new 50p coin is astonishing. This miscarriage of democracy has made the UK the laughing stock of not only Europe, but the world. This divisive and negative act is not something we should celebrate or commemorate – it is an international embarrassment. Maybe they will next award OBEs to Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson for their services to international relations.

David Cleaton-Roberts
London SE15

The words on the proposed 50p piece to celebrate Brexit, are okay, but a bit bland.

More than half a century ago, Martin Luther King quoted from a fine African American spiritual, words that are unsurpassable regarding the Brexit coin: "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last.”

Dai Woosnam
Grimsby

The design of the 50p coin in 1973 celebrating our accession to the European Economic Community showed nine linked hands “in a mutual gesture of trust, assistance and friendship”. What will the design of the new one be – lemmings jumping over a cliff?

Richard Greenwood
Bewdley

The universal credit con

The Budget announcements for extra money for universal credit (UC), are just a con. Chucking money at it does not solve the underlying problems with UC. Further improvements were announced but pushed to 2020, or 2021. The benefits freeze still leaves working people worse off, even after tax changes, plus National Insurance changes compounding the problem. UC should have been paused or scrapped and the Budget was the ideal time. Austerity isn't over but just dressed up, with a bit here, a bit there. Come on people, wake up to the conservatives!

Gary Martin
London E17

Philip Hammond’s Budget was remarkable only in that it introduced the novel concept of “Schrödinger's austerity”, in which Tory austerity is both dead and yet still very much alive – especially if you’re on the generalised attack on benefit claimants the Tories call Universal Credit.

Sasha Simic
London N16

EU rules are hurting entrepreneurs

No matter how progressively minded Chuka Umunna's “incredibly successful entrepreneurs” are (Voices, 30 October) they face a situation in which, unless they successfully compete on costs, they will go out of business or be gobbled up. This is why the likes of James Dyson locate their manufacturing in low wage countries and why wages in Britain are driven down.

This cannot be tackled without controls on capital, state investment in infrastructure and state aid to industry. And little of that is possible while we are constrained by EU rule and our unions shackled by European Court of Justice judgments and Thatcher's anti-union laws that New Labour conspicuously failed to repeal.

A more realistic account of how businesses behave is given in the same issue of The Independent. Ben Chu reports on how Brazil's business leaders have backed the far-right Bolsonaro when faced by the joint Workers' Party/Communist Party presidential slate that would put people before profit.

Nick Wright
Faversham