Wednesday's Letters: My wife was saved by world-class health team

We all live outside Manchester and came to visit my son at Leeds University. During our meal, my wife collapsed. We immediately called an ambulance and luckily she was also comforted by another doctor who was present in the restaurant. The ambulance arrived within three to five minutes at the most. She was transferred to the ambulance and suffered three massive heart attacks in the vehicle. She needed to be resuscitated three times and was than transferred to Leeds General Infirmary. The ambulance arrived at the hospital at about 2.30pm. She was assessed, treated and operated on at once. The operation was a success and my wife was conscious and out of danger by 6pm. We found out afterwards that my wife had total blockages to two arteries. We also found out that this kind of heart attack is extremely serious and does not usually have a happy ending, so speed and skill of treatment is absolutely essential.

The speed of the ambulance's response from making the 999 call to operating on her is unheard of and the speed of the treatment in hospital simply breathtaking. As mentioned, this was all done between 2.15pm and 6pm. Furthermore, the extremely kind and caring attitude of everyone involved, including the restaurant staff, made all the difference. If the ambulance had arrived just a few minutes later or the doctor not been as decisive, my wife would have been dead.

I was born and grew up in Germany and emigrated to Britain 30 years ago. I have travelled extensively and have so far also been one of the biggest critics of the NHS, as I always thought that the service was quite primitive compared to Germany. I could not have been more wrong.

I can assure you there is nowhere on this planet where my wife could have received a better, faster and kinder treatment than she had in Leeds and I am almost certain, should this incident have happened in any other country, including Germany, she would not have survived.

I will never again hear another bad word said about the NHS. Britons should know what a fantastic ambulance service and hospital they have in Leeds.

My wife has made a full recovery and is now at home.

From: Klaus Bohne, Acacia Avenue, Hale, Cheshire.

A Tory own goal over child benefit

From: Ann Firth, Linville Avenue, Liverpool.

SURELY David Cameron scored an own goal in proposing to remove child benefit from higher rate taxpayers (Yorkshire Post, October 7) as it so obviously unfair to one income families, and discourages parents from looking after their own children at home.

It is also another blow to pension provision, mainly for women, as the person claiming the child benefit, usually the mother, is credited with National Insurance contributions towards the basic state pension.

However, it does carry on the work of the Tory government in the previous recession of the early 1990s, which firstly removed mortgage interest tax relief at the higher rate and then altogether, closely followed by the married person's tax allowance. Both of these allowances, though, were removed gradually and surely that would be a better way of dealing with the child benefit issue?

How sad and disappointing, though, that Conservative, or Tory

dominated, governments are doing the work of the Labour Party, in discouraging families from providing for themselves by one earner getting a better paid job and one parent staying at home to bring up their children without any burden on the state. I'm sure the Labour leader will make hay out of this issue, while secretly being pleased that he won't have to risk unpopularity in the future.

Scargill the destroyer

From: MA Hopkins, Carlton Drive, Guiseley, Leeds.

TERRY Palmer (Yorkshire Post, October 16) makes reference to a Prime Minister of the UK who in the 1980s was totally committed to the destruction of the mining industry and its people in this country.

May I respectfully appraise Mr Palmer of the true facts at that time, when the NUM was led by Arthur Scargill, a committed Marxist, intent only on the overthrow of the legitimately elected government.

An earlier government under Ted Heath had fallen as a result of a strike by the mining industry and Mr Scargill saw such action as the prime means of achieving his end of bringing down legitimate government and ending a system he totally despised, irrespective of the outcome for his union members.

Fortunately that Government was led by a Prime Minister who was able to

resist Mr Scargill's attempted tyranny.

It was Mr Scargill's unbridled ambition for his own political ends

which caused the destruction of the mining industry.

Miners' true professional

From: Brian Sheridan, Redmires Road, Sheffield.

I HAVE no doubt that the spirituality of the Chilean miners and their families helped to sustain them during their ordeal (Yorkshire Post, October 14).

However, I have long thought supreme professionalism in the face of adversity to be one of the most noble of qualities.

What moved me most was when foreman Luis Urzua emerged as the last man to be rescued.

"I've finished my shift," he remarked dryly, "now they're all yours."

And they say the English are the masters of understatement.

From: From: Chris and Sandra Schorah, Gascoigne Avenue, Leeds.

WASN'T it great to see the Chilean miners emerge from their long ordeal in such good spirits and general wellbeing?

Your reporter (Yorkshire Post, October 15) attributes this to the care, feeding and psychological support they received.

However, in the same article, the Chilean Health Minister called it "a miracle" – claiming that the efforts made don't explain their healthy condition.

The miners themselves say it's down to their faith. They held services down the mine and although not all were Christians when they went down, they all are now.

They've been reported as saying "We were not 33 we were 34 because Jesus Christ was with us down there."

We have diluted the standard of university entrants

From: Les Arnott, head of careers, Handsworth Christian School,

Sheffield.

D BALDWIN (Yorkshire Post, October 17) makes some telling points about university education.

At the recent leadership hustings meeting in Rotherham for the UKIP leadership election, Nigel Farage won the biggest cheer of the night for talking pure sense on this very topic – and attacking the absurdities of the "50 per cent to go to university" nonsense.

He spoke of restoration of grants – for the deserving – and pointed out that the present structure is a house of cards based on sending young people to university just for the sake of it. Indeed, why no equivalent push where apprenticeships are concerned?

I went to university in 1970 and when you earned your place you had certainly earned your grant. Getting into the top five per cent or so deserved to be rewarded. Call me elitist – I do not care, I believe in having a meritocracy.

The struggle to reach that high point brought out the very best in me and interestingly, as "a high flier" from a working class background, I most assuredly would not have gone to university at all if I had had to pay for the privilege.

As places have multiplied – so many in disciplines which struggle to have any academic base whatsoever – the whole system has been

thoroughly diluted, helped in no small measure by the undoubted dumbing down of A-level grades.

Society has no need for an entire social group with qualifications which possess little or no currency. This leads people to have a higher opinion of their qualities than should be the case and whose education has lacked the rigours of academic excellence.

My own personal experience of teaching and education leads me to believe that some students who stumble into university courses today would have been considered substandard in the past.

To some, this will be considered as "proof of the worthiness of the present system" but put into other terms, "a debased currency is the surest way to economic disaster".

Why we lag behind Germans

From: Michael Swaby, Hainton Avenue, Grimsby.

DAVID W Wright is accurate in describing entrepreneur Peter Wilkinson's critique as "excellent" (Yorkshire Post, October 15).

However, to this Mr Wright has added his own rather confusing view of the EU.

He cites "the ever-increasing problems of our membership of, and subsequent control, by the EU while China, India, Germany and Brazil forge ahead". The US is omitted.

If Germany can forge ahead, why cannot we?

The only significant difference, in EU terms, is that Germany has the use of the euro and, thanks to the doleful influence of the

Eurosceptics, we do not.

The sooner this unfortunate situation is reviewed, the better.

From: Edwin Bateman, South Dyke, Great Salkeld, Penrith, Cumbria.

THERE is no need for cuts in Government spending. Exit from the EU will save about 120bn a year and save defence.

Repealing the 1972 European Communities Act will let the Government off the hook.

A fight to the death

From: Maurice Harland, Dorchester Crescent, Bradford.

READING Ian McMillan (Yorkshire Post, October 14) I think the words he was looking for were:

One fine day in the middle of the night;

Two dead men got up to fight;

Two blind men to see fair play;

Two deaf and dumb to shout hooray.

Right penalty

From: Wayne George Seward, Barley Field Road, Wetherby.

MEN that abuse and kill small children should hang.

If capital and corporal punishment was put to a national referendum, 70 per cent of the population would vote for its return.

Queue tip

From: Fred Williamson, Winter Street, Tinonee, New South Wales,

Australia.

PLEASE remind your letter writer Father Neil McNicholas (Yorkshire Post, October 7) that bank employees in the UK are not referred to as "tellers" and we do not stand in line, we stand in a queue.