YP Letters: Nationality is irrelevant in healthcare

From: Brian Sheridan, Lodge Moor, Sheffield.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

I HESITATE to respond to such a manifestly xenophobic letter as that of EB Warris who thinks the NHS wastes too much money on “foreigners” (The Yorkshire Post, July 5).

However, I once had the misfortune to be taken ill while in charge of a school exchange in France. My host sent for his GP, or “généraliste”, as the French call them, who promptly attended to me. Afterwards I asked my host how much I owed him. He replied that it hadn’t cost him a sou.

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While our health service is far inferior to that of most developed countries, it is reassuring to know that at least, like the French, we don’t ask a patient’s nationality before treating them. To do so would be morally wrong.

From: David Craggs, Shafton Gate, Goldthorpe.

JUDGING on where the vast majority of NHS photographs were taken in your excellent supplement on 70 years of the NHS (The Yorkshire Post, July 3), one would get the impression that it was all happening in Leeds and Sheffield, with precious little happening elsewhere.

Just three showed what was happening in the city of Wakefield.

Let me put the record 
straight.

Throughout most of last century, Wakefield had five hospitals providing care for its citizens. Clayton Hospital, the County Hospital, Manygates Maternity Hospital, Pinderfields Hospital, and the West Riding Lunatic Asylum that was renamed Stanley Royd Hospital in, I believe, the 1950s.

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The County was closed and demolished in, I believe, the 1960s, private and council housing now occupying the site, part of the large Eastmoor area. Manygates closed a little later. Stanley Royd was also closed, but instead of demolishing it, the huge main building was converted to luxury flats.

Clayton Hospital was also closed, and at present what to do with the site hasn’t yet been decided. Medical provision for a huge area is now provided by a rebuilt Pinderfields, well known for its Burns Unit, which played an important role at the time of the Bradford City football ground fire.

From: Neil Richardson, Kirkheaton.

BERNARD Ingham (The Yorkshire Post, July 4) appeared under a title which began ‘We know the NHS’s ills’, but do we, and are we the best agents to alleviate such malady?

A hospital near Thornaby seems unlikely to have the same mix of skills, opportunities, and problems as one in the vicinity of Torbay; rather, staff will see their ever-changing patch in unique ways.

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Even the frequently repeated demand for a work-life balance could be expressed more strongly in one region than the other.

Somehow aligning a list of 1,000 bright ideas with a hospital might miss important aspects of that organisation’s specific milieu, a concern that persists even if experts (distant from the action) reduce the list to 20.

To quote Sir Geoffrey Vickers, human systems are different.

Mismanaging family funds

From: J Taylor, Leeds.

MANY thousands of words have been written about poverty throughout the world but in this once great country of ours we don’t call it poverty – we call it mismanagement of funds.

How can anyone really say we are poor when people spend many thousands on holidays, have cars, spend many hundreds of pounds on the latest mobile phones, eat in very good restaurants and a two children family brings in £35,000 per week?

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Yet some people say they cannot afford to give them breakfast. Rubbish.

Six eggs £1, bag of porridge £1, two pints of milk £1. Hang your head in shame. I don’t like looking back, wages £3 per week, no family allowance, six children to feed, yet people managed.

When small is beautiful

From: Anne Boodt, Harrogate.

WELL done Georgia Duffy for the wonderful publicity she achieved for her lovely little bookshop, Imagined Things, in the Westminster Arcade, Harrogate.

Thanks to The Yorkshire Post and others featuring her shop, she also gained space in the national press!

And all thanks to social 
media, not expensive 
marketing!

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We’re lucky to have an excellent Waterstones in Harrogate, but if we really want our independent sector to survive we need to support them. If the book you want isn’t in stock, Georgia can order it and get it within a couple of days. No need to rely on Amazon or Waterstones.

Hypocrisy of estates names

From: Jane Adams, Harrogate.

HAS anyone noticed how developers name their new estates after what they have just destroyed?

Presumably in a cynical attempt to sell their purchasers a piece of imagined rural idyll.

Please could they be a bit more honest – Three Dead Badgers, No More Skylarks or Goodbye Lapwings would be much nearer the mark than the Meadows, Fields and Pastures we are being offered locally.

Sound sense from Christa

From: Mrs EH Bell, Newland Avenue, Driffield.

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WHAT an absolute treat it is to have the brilliant articles contributed by that lovely lady, Christa Ackroyd, in your super paper every Wednesday.

They bring back many happy memories, also they are full of common sense which I’m afraid I can’t help feeling can very often be in rather short supply in this day and age!

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