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Letters: the NHS is suffering because it has become a political football

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt is questioned by MPs about the winter crisis in the NHS.
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt is questioned by MPs about the winter crisis in the NHS. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

While I would not wish to disagree with the thrust of your major article on the National Health Service (“Voices from the frontline”, Review), we are not going to make serious inroads if we don’t ask the right questions. I would suggest the question is not: “How do we better manage health?”, but :“How do we better manage Britain?”

We all know that our society needs more doctors, hospital beds and money. We know that the tremendous input from science and technology is a huge expense. Yet we don’t have sufficient doctors, beds or money. The spending on health in Britain is lower than other comparable countries. We have said this for years, but the answer has always been – as to Boxer in Animal Farm – “work harder”.

Everything in Britain is seen through the prism of tribal ideology, which leads only to adversarial politics. The left fights for its cause for a few years and then the right takes over, but the problem is never satisfactorily addressed because all the effort and much of the resources are governed by the ideological standpoint of those in power. We need to move from the competitive model of politics to a more collaborative, negotiating style.
Andrew Lacey
Mold
Flintshire

Dr Richard Banks takes you to task for repeating “the misleading statement that the NHS was ranked top in the Commonwealth survey of 11 healthcare systems” (The big issue). I assume that he refers to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private US foundation, and nothing to do with the British Commonwealth.

Dr Banks fails to mention that the report covers five measures of the efficacy of the 11 healthcare systems. The NHS came top in two, third in another two and next to last (as Dr Banks observes) in one. Oh, and the UK came top overall. The measure in which the UK came next to last was healthcare outcomes. The US came last. One might argue that the systems are at the opposite ends of some spectrum, with the UK’s a modestly funded monolithic state organised system and the US’s a privately delivered system costing, as a percentage of per capita GDP, about twice as much. It is hard to see what causes them to perform so badly on this measure. But it seems unlikely to be how they are organised, given their disparate natures.

I have no brief to defend Mrs May. I note that this is the second time since the last war that the NHS has been in such a poor state and on both occasions the Conservatives were in government. But self-serving and misleading arguments about the NHS will not help us get to a better place.
Dr Roger Oliver
Eastbourne

It is still vital to learn about what lies beneath the soil

It is simply impossible to appreciate the British landscape without understanding its underlying soils (“If we want to shape a landscape that’s fit for all, we must stop romanticising it”, Comment).

Ever since hominids first arrived here, they have had an impact, even with simple flint tools. The agricultural improvers of the early 19th century readily tapped the knowledge obtained after William Smith published his 1815 geological map, complete with a concise memoir full of detailed insights about our landscape. Often, when I have been mapping, it is tiny changes in vegetation that have provided me with clues as to the location of geological boundaries.

Instead of continuing this long tradition, the British Geological Survey ended the routine production of a highly impressive series of 1:50,000 geological maps and brief explanations for the general public and academics alike.

This is one of the worst false economies of modern times. During the 2001 foot and mouth crisis, such staff provided their field knowledge, on a 24-hour rota, to help find safe locations for burial pits and pyres, and essential university student field trips had to be held abroad.
David Nowell
New Barnet, Hertfordshire

Addressing loneliness

I was extremely delighted to come across the news regarding the appointment of a minister for loneliness by Theresa May’s government, as it is the first time such a portfolio has been created. Although loneliness is not an ailment, per se, it could lead to one.

Loneliness causes “feelings” to get accumulated and if one does not give vent to such pent-up feelings through interaction with others, it will lead to dangerous situations. Diversion of the mind is needed and this can be achieved only through mingling with others. Loneliness haunts not only the elders, but the younger ones, too.

As this is the first of its kind, the world will be watching with eagerness how the minister discharges her responsibility. One cannot but commend the government for preparing the ground to tackle loneliness.
VS Jayaraman
Chennai, India

Vive la différence? Non

“One should always listen to the French difference.” Really? Agnès Poirier (“ ‘Triumphant and free women’ who started a debate we needed to have? Or hostages to a culture of misogyny? An insider’s guide to French feminism”, In Focus) tries her best to defuse the international row over what has come to be known for short as the Deneuve letter, but lines such as: “The letter’s authors did not do themselves any favours by writing of men’s ‘right to pester’ women” are not a good look if you want to persuade people to your point of view.

The Deneuve school of French feminism, with its emphasis on the liberation of women’s sexuality, is a cry for women to have the same right to sexual pleasure as men. Nothing wrong with that, you might think. And there are plenty of clubs and other venues to accommodate any and every taste, if that is the sort of thing you like.

However, do not forget that the philosophical justification of libertinism is also a French invention and that for the last two centuries it has been used to justify forms of sexual behaviour, nearly always by powerful men, which many, if not most, people find abhorrent. The opposite of libertinism is not puritanism. It is a culture that encourages kind, loving, joyous and, above all, consensual sexual relationships. Perhaps we could call it consensualism? I don’t hear too much about this coming out of the French feminist movement.
Janet Stevens
Lézardrieux
France

Let’s vote again about Brexit

Thank you, Andrew Rawnsley (“How and why Britain might be asked to vote again on Brexit”, Comment).

Surely the rational argument for a second referendum lies within Westminster. Is there a single politician who would disagree with the statement: “I am in politics to do the best for the country and to improve the lot of the British people”? Yet when it came to the referendum, MPs of all parties were divided.

None of us, public and politicians alike, had any idea what the deal would be until it had been agreed with the EU. It is therefore perfectly rational that once we all know what the deal is and whether, overall, it will to be to our advantage, it should be put to the country. As a taxpayer, I would be happy for the government to spend the money required for a second referendum.
Dr Nick Maurice
Marlborough