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Letters: hospitals need housing for nurses, not more car parks

High house prices are forcing hospital staff to find accomodation further away, and drive long distances to work
High house prices are forcing hospital staff to find accomodation further away, and drive long distances to work Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

James Tapper’s article (“Build 40,000 homes for nurses on spare NHS land”, News, 11 June) is of particular relevance to the Christie Hospital in Withington, south Manchester, where high house prices make it very difficult for hard-pressed hospital staff to live locally.

This leads to many staff having to travel significant distances to work, resulting in chronic issues with traffic and parking in the area.

Surely it makes far more sense for the hospital to use its precious capital funds to build or refurbish staff accommodation on its available land (there are still three nurses’ hostels on site which have been converted to other uses) rather than spend millions of pounds on a proposed multi-storey car park which would, ironically, contribute significantly to ill health in the vicinity (including the two adjacent primary schools) through its impact on air quality.
Don Berry
Manchester M20

How to cut exams stress

One factor concerning children’s and their parents’ stress over GCSE exams overlooked by Laura McInerney (“Exam stress rising? No, pupils are just better at seeking help”, Comment, last week) is that British students are almost uniquely discriminated against by the Ucas university application form.

Few other countries have age-16 public examinations, so their students report nothing on their academic performance from their more junior years. British students, in contrast, have to declare all their grades, and will lose out if they get low grades in some subjects or, increasingly, for highly-competitive courses in elite universities, if they show any deviations from perfection.

It is high time that this particular inequity was righted. At the very least, late developers should be allowed to apply when they have their actual, rather than predicted, A-level or IB results without disclosing their GCSE grades; and to be fair this should mean that all “actual results” applications should exclude GCSE results.
Professor Miles Hewstone
Oxford

Britain’s shame over refugees

Mark Townsend’s excellent but distressing article on the plight of unaccompanied refugee minors stranded on the Greek island of Chios (“Abandoned, abused and forgotten: the Syrian refugee children who have endured months of violence in a Greek island detention camp”, World, last week), raises the question: what possible justification can the Conservative government offer for reneging on its initial agreement under the Dubs amendment to allow 3,000 traumatised refugee youngsters to seek asylum in Britain – a number of whom are legally eligible to be here?

What a contrast to the British response to the plight of second world war Jewish refugee children. This government should hang its head in shame – what has happened to the British sense of fair play and basic humanity? Is this an example of how Brexit will determine our response to future refugee crises –essentially a fear of increasing immigrant numbers?
Ann Bright
Wallington

Tim Farron’s gospel truth

In his article on Tim Farron’s resignation as leader of the Lib Dems over his Christian beliefs (“Why no one needs to be a martyr to their faith in a secular, sceptical age”, In Focus, last week) Peter Stanford, in referring to the teachings of Jesus Christ in the four gospels, states that: “He says not a single word on gay sex.” I suggest that he reads the latter part of St Luke’s gospel, chapter 17. In referring to Sodom, it is clear what Jesus meant.
Thomas E Rookes
Lincoln

I’m a stranger to Google

John Naughton avers (“Google, not GCHQ, is the truly chilling spy network”, New Review, last week) that “searches that people type every day into Google… [leave] digital trails that are logged, stored and analysed”.

But how would Google know who I am? I don’t have a personal computer, and on the few occasions that I’ve accessed Google, these were through one of the computers at the local library, which are used by dozens of people. If all these users are leaving digital trails, Google must be thoroughly confused.
Ian Wishart
Chislehurst

Answers to Fallada questions

Philip Oltermann (“Strange tale of the anti-Nazi bestseller, the Stasi spies and the missing Gestapo files”, World, last week) raises important issues around Hans Fallada, most of which are dealt with in the numerous biographies, including the only one in English, Jenny Williams’s More Lives than One (Penguin, 2012). Fallada’s first reaction when it was suggested he write Alone in Berlin was to refuse, on the grounds that he had not himself been in the resistance.

His apparent antisemitic outburst in his prison diaries was more likely inserted by him as a quote for a possible Nazi censor. The Jew he appeared to be writing about in such derogatory terms was his friend and editor, Paul Mayer.
Nicholas Jacobs
London NW5