Vultures circle health service

“COMPETITION will be the servant of health care, not the master... this is a bill for patients not profits.” So said Nick Clegg on the NHS reforms (Yorkshire Post, March 12)).

There is a dispiriting familiarity in the endless chanting of “competition” as if it were an unquestionable panacea for everything. Decades ago, the same mantra was being persuasively parroted as energy and transport were privatised – and where are we now?

At least with these, we have the occasional option of wrapping up and walking – the NHS is literally a life-and-death issue. If, as Nick Clegg claims, this is not a Bill for profit, why would American-style health care vultures be interested?

Horse history

From: Rachel Taylor, Steep Lane, Sowerby.

JANET Berry (Yorkshire Post, March 10) was taken in by the photo of the sad end to many of the First World War horses to feed the French, like the presenter was on Channel Four’s The Real War Horse.

Did she not notice that the horse allegedly waiting its fate was actually all fitted up with collar, bridle and harness to pull something, sadly off camera, but possibly a cart?

And in the Second World War the German army was still very reliant on horses.

Grave matters

From: John Hodgson, Oakwood, Leeds.

I WAS amused by the letter from Mr Urquhart (Yorkshire Post, March 14) about us wishing to pass away reluctantly. It reminded me of the undertaker who signed off all his correspondence “Yours eventually”.