Readers' letters - July 30: NHS

Get rid of red tape, let medics run NHS
Nurse Joan Grimshaw with colleaguesNurse Joan Grimshaw with colleagues
Nurse Joan Grimshaw with colleagues

Re: Celebrating 70 years of the NHS (LP July 2).

What an inspiring story Sister Joan Grimshaw tells of her time at PRI, particularly the story of her early years there and of her training.

Especially interesting are her comments on modern day methods of training.

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Good nurses are born, not manufactured through universities as is the approach today.

What better way is there of learning than hands-on, especially in the nursing profession?

No amount of university training would have made sister Joan and her contemporaries any better nurses.

As progress was made through technology, techniques and drugs etc and changes occurred within the medical profession, the nursing staff of the day adapted and came to terms with such progression.

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Most importantly, the human connection was there, helping patients feel settled and comfortable.

This of course still happens today, although today’s nurses seem reticent to contact fully with the patient due to unseen pressures.

Could this be due to the faceless bureaucracy Sister Grimshaw refers to in the article, referring to non-medicals running the show?

It would be an interesting exercise to find out what percentage of the NHS budget goes on administration.

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The medical profession has always been self-perpetuating and the NHS staffed and run by self-motivated medical people.

For goodness sake, let them do it again and get rid of the bureaucratic elements within our NHS.

PS: If the above meant higher taxes, the whole country would shout “Get on with it”.

Huttonian

Hutton

economy

We’re paying the bankers

The annual TV twilight zone is nearly upon us – you know, that dead time between the end of Poldark and the new series of Gogglebox.

Is there anything worth watching in the meantime?

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Well, here’s something which requires no TV licence or Sky subscription and is guaranteed to give hours of televisual pleasure. Just pop along to:- http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/

Done it? Good.

Now sit back and marvel at how the numbers just keep on going up, never slowing down, stopping, taking a power nap, let alone going backwards. It really is hypnotic and addictive viewing, I think you’ll agree.

Beats Aidan Turner’s naked torso every time.

Whilst you’re transfixed, just consider this.

That colossal number you’re looking at (it’s in trillions by the way) is government borrowing we, the taxpayer, are expected to pay back.

To whom? Private banks with private shareholders, that’s who.

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No wonder they’re laughing all the way to the bank – well, they would be if they could find one still open that is.

Consider this also.

That debt has interest attached to it.

Let’s be generous and say three per cent.

This means that, based on £2 trillion, we are obliged to pay the bankers over £60bn a year just in interest – the actual debt never decreasing nor any hope of ever paying it back. Just think what could be done with this money.

So the next time our chums in Westminster talk about austerity or necessary cuts to public services to ‘reduce’ borrowing (ahem), bear in mind that this is simply being done to fund interest payments.

Nothing else.

Put another way, we are all working, on average, at least six weeks a year just to pay this interest.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy doesn’t it ?

Enjoy!

Tim Kennedy

via email

brexit

Fishing industry and the EU

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Joh Voges, in ‘Voice of Reason and Good Sense’, quotes Steve and Janet Hogger as saying, “Can anybody actually point to a single way in which they, or someone they know, have been directly adversely affected by being a member of the EU?” (LP Letters, July 26).

Presumably, none of these three individuals have ever come into contact with anyone who works (or, perhaps more properly, in view of what membership of the European Union has done to it, worked) in the British fishing industry.

Geoff Hewitt

Penwortham

wildlife

In defence

of wasps

Re: wasp numbers increasing this summer. As a long-time gardener, latterly professional, I feel I must make some comment in support of wasps. I have only been stung three times in 71 years and this incident was entirely my fault. I had entered an old shed in springtime to find a large wasp fall down the back of my neck, furious at being disturbed suddenly from his long winter sleep.

At present, I have two nests in the garden, both in large ‘bird boxes’, which perhaps should be renamed.

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The inmates seem contented. I work around them and they me. One of my most prized possessions is a three-year-old nest still attached to a beam in my shed roof which is, frankly, a work of art.

Jake Potts

Address supplied

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