Letters November 25: What’s wrong with porridge to start day?

LABOUR councillor Elizabeth Nash (The Yorkshire Post, November 19) says that many families in her neighbourhood “cannot afford a cooked breakfast”.

What’s wrong with a nice steaming bowl of freshly cooked porridge? Cheap and easy. A good source of slow-release energy. In fact giving one of today’s severely under-exercised youngsters a plate of eggs, bacon, sausage and fried bread every day would be one of the fastest shortcuts to obesity imaginable.

When I was a youngster, I never went to school without breakfast of some kind. Porridge? Yes, I liked it then and I like it now. The occasional egg or baked beans on toast.

My mum worked nights at the local hospital, so I prepared breakfast for myself and for my father too, bless him, who wasn’t entirely sure what a kitchen was for.

So what if today’s over-indulged kids turn their noses up at porridge or the “wrong” kind of cereal? In my day, you ate whatever was put in front of you, or you went hungry. Your choice. “Breakfast clubs” at school? Whatever next?

Yes, money is a bit tight for some, but you can still eat well quite cheaply. Basic foodstuffs need not be expensive. I bought a big bag of potatoes the other day. It cost me £1 and for a few quid more I could have bought enough rice or pasta to feed an army.

Eggs are so cheap, they’re practically giving them away. No time? How long does it take to boil an egg?

From: John Burrill, Oakridge Court, Bingley.

I AM astonished by the letter from Coun Elizabeth Nash that you illustrate by showing a full English breakfast.

Are we to believe that this is a normal breakfast for school children? I don’t know any adults who have this every day. I may have it on a Sunday as a treat.

My healthy, warm and nutritious breakfast is, as it was when I was a child, a bowl of porridge. The cost of this is less than 50p per serving, including milk, and is far healthier than your illustration.

Is the councillor suggesting that this is unaffordable to the families in her ward and then suggesting that to compensate they fill up on snacks, at what cost?

Perhaps budgeting and cooking classes would be beneficial to her and her electorate.

Warning on weekend NHS

From: Andrea and Jonathan Leggatt, Stonedale Close, Pool-in-Wharfedale, Leeds.

DEAR junior doctors, a few things to consider before your impending strike.

At the moment the NHS is run as a weekday business and the fact of the matter is that you are 40 per cent more likely to die if you require an operation at the weekend as opposed to being admitted Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm.

It is for this reason that our father Christopher is no longer alive today. He had a slow ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm on a Sunday and was taken to Bradford. It was only upon arrival that they found out that there was no surgeon, and so he was taken to Huddersfield where there was an on-call surgeon.

This delay dropped his chance of survival to none, and it was ruled by a coroner that had there been a surgeon at Bradford, or if it was a weekday, then he would be alive today.

I’m sure that when you decided to practice medicine you went into it for two reasons – the money and to help people. All that you are doing by refusing to work weekends without extra money is putting the NHS back to a weekday service in which people like our dad die just because they need a doctor at the weekend.

All it will do is put an extra cost on the NHS, meaning the Government can either cut from other services and endanger them, or hike up taxes so your pay won’t actually go up that much in “real terms” anyway.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be compensated, all I’m saying is please don’t put a financial burden on the NHS that is impossible to maintain so that people like our dad might survive in the future.

From: Robert Holland, Skipton Road, Cononley, Keighley.

YOUR article about the multi-million extra costs of hospitals hiring agency staff in Yorkshire should be vital reading for George Osborne (The Yorkshire Post, November 21).

Staff shortages have led to most hospital trusts, here and elsewhere, facing multi-million pound deficits, but not improving services. Millions of pounds in extra money has gone to agencies’ profits, not to treating patients.

May I add one more issue, based on my own experience? In April 2015, I was a patient for one night in Airedale Hospital under observation. I put in a complaint later about a member of staff (not the excellent nurse in charge during the 12 hour shift).

I phoned the ward manager, asking “who was this person? He did not seem like a nurse”. The manager investigated and telephoned me back promptly. He was an agency nurse. The manager said: “You see, we cannot control quality of agency staff.” I learned later that the manager told the agency that the hospital would not employ that person again. Well done.

The Government should be meeting the needs of our NHS in terms of staff working “in house”. They should train more staff and provide decent pay and conditions to retain those working now.