Prescription for funding
GP practices

THE comments regarding rural practice are well made by William Hague (Yorkshire Post, June 7).

The reason for the de-funding of some practices is the transition to a position where practices are funded equally according to weighted demand.

This tends to favour urban practices where deprivation is higher. My reflection of working in both rural and urban practice is that it is hard work in both. The challenges are different but the workload is equally high.

It is getting difficult to recruit GPs into urban practices and very soon in cities like Hull it is going to be a massive problem. Fewer doctors are choosing general practice as a career and more, including myself, choose to work part-time. Many are retiring or planning to retire soon.

It is no good complaining about A&E waits if there are not enough GPs to do the daytime work or cover out-of-hours shifts as this is bound to have a knock-on effect as patients struggle to get appointments.

Action is needed soon to avert a workforce crisis in three years time.

This means more funding which means a shift from somewhere else in the system as there is no new money.

The question is where in the system can resources be shifted from? At what point will it become clear that ever increasing demand can not be matched by ever increasing resources, ie, taxes?

From: Roger M Dobson, Ash Street, Cross Hills, Keighley, West Yorkshire.

THE management team of the Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust deserve all the comments they get.

The other day, I had occasion to visit Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield to see a friend of mine on Coronary Care Ward 11.

I am classed as disabled and on full Disability Living Allowance. I approached a volunteer member of staff and asked for a wheelchair and for someone to take me to Ward 11. The volunteer apologised and informed me that there were no reception staff or porters working that day.

My hospital visit was ruined by the management of Mid Yorkshire Trust. A child could have seen that staff were needed. The rest of the staff were wonderful and attentive.

Labour must return home

From: Peter Asquith-Cowen, First Lane, Anlaby, Near Beverley, East Yorkshire.

FIRST Ed Balls and then Ed Miliband have declared their intention to continue the 
policies of the coalition Government if Labour win the next election.

I contend that this is a lamentable betrayal of the “principles” that were set down when the Independent Labour Party came into existence at the Bradford Conference in 1893, chaired by its founding father, Keir Hardie.

The basic principles of the party were “to secure the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”.

Its programme demanded a wide list of social reforms, like 
the eight hour day, state 
provision for the aged, disabled and orphans and reform of taxation.

In the early 20th century, the Liberal government of Campbell-Bannerman brought in many reforms and an Act of Parliament in 1908 brought in pensions for people over seventy of five shillings a week.

A time when the Liberal Party had credibility and enacted many social reforms. A far cry from today! Only Labour can and should return us to reality, but it has become estranged from its socialist principles and is only a cigarette paper away from the Tories.

Miliband and Balls are going to destroy Labour the same 
way Nick Clegg will destroy the Lib Dems. They are too young, and too far removed from reality to re-create a proper Labour Party.

By virtue of what it is, Labour must be a left-wing reactionary party at total variance with Tory ideology. It must represent the vast mass of the nation, not the pampered few.

It will only achieve power again by reversing all the damage 
the coalition Government is doing to the infrastructure and the lives of ordinary British citizens.

The smoke-screen of 
austerity must be blown away 
as a pack of lies to undermine 
the public services and lowering the living-standards of the 
nation.

Plastic pies are no match

From: Malcolm Barker, Slingsby Walk, Harrogate.

LAST week’s County Championship match at Scarborough was played on 
a wicket as dead as the 
occupant of a mortuary slab, 
thus testing the loyalty of the faithful. There also arose the vexed question of the decline 
of the luncheon interval pork pies.

Hitherto they have been a treat, with crunchy pastry enclosing tasty contents.

The meat last week 
remained excellent, but it was wrapped in flaccid pastry 
lacking the fondly remember crispness, maybe because the pies, previously sold from 
open trays, are now enclosed 
in plastic sachets.

If this change has been made
 in the name of health and 
safety, it is quite unnecessary. 
My friend and I have been 
eating pies at Scarborough 
cricket for upwards of 60 years, and have never suffered ill-effects.

We are resigned to the lack of lively pitches, and accept that we will never again see a team made up entirely of Yorkshiremen triumphing on that lovely old ground of so many happy memories. But please restore 
our pies.