YP Letters: NHS closures spread anger and alarm

YOU report ‘Campaign’s dismay as beds closure is rubber-stamped’ (The Yorkshire Post, November 25). I think there is more than ‘dismay’ locally at Jeremy Hunt’s decision not to instruct East Yorkshire Clinical Commissioning Group to reconsider its planned closure of beds and minor injuries units in rural East Yorkshire.

There is serious alarm that Mr Hunt criticises the CCG’s failure to consult and engage with local stakeholders and then expects it to suddenly change direction. On the proposed closure of Driffield’s Minor Injuries Unit alone, the CCG received 10,000 expressions of concern and over 8,000 pages of objections, which it happily ignored.

That was after serious misrepresentations in its proposals, for example suggesting that Withernsea was on the banks of the River Humber just a couple of miles east of Hull, and that the centre of Beverley is 12 miles from Bransholme Urgent Care Centre, rather than five miles.

The areas affected by the heavy reduction in health services are characterised by an ageing population, considerable planned growth, already reduced ambulance and responder services as well as other cuts to public transport and services.

As a country, we face a crisis in health and social care arising from gross government underfunding, deeply damaging NHS restructuring and the obsession with privatising what every survey confirms is the most efficient health service in the world.

However there is also a crisis within a crisis with the increasing attacks on health care provision in rural areas. Experts talk about the crucial first hour in acute care. People in this part of Yorkshire are increasingly unlikely to access emergency services within that hour, and will die.

So it is not so much dismay as alarm and anger.

From: Christine Hyde, Dewsbury.

SO what is an NHS Accountable Care System (ACS)? It is not a National Health Service. All areas are different, the biggest of all postcode lotteries. Money for health is going to the South. So, in the North, we already have the worst health outcomes in England with an underspend of around £800m per year per head of population, compared with the South.

Yet, over the last five years, we have seen further disinvestment at a time when we’re also being asked to make substantial £1bn savings. An ACS is a stepping stone to an accountant-led care organisation delivering what is known popularly as cuts.

The Sustainability and Transformation Plan looked at the dismantled NHS, assessed the number partners and NHS providers in an area, worked out what they do and called it an Accountable Care System.

The plan is to sew them all back together in the Accountant-led Care Organisation bag, where the companies will have the most power, due to their superior finances and letting them all fight it out together or ‘negotiate’, who does what for how much.

There are the rent extractors with hedge fund involvement, alongside hospital trusts, some of whom are making deals with US multi-nationals already, plus asset strippers, alongside charities which are run more like businesses than charities. Whose NHS is that?

Put accent on clarity

From: Brian Sheridan, Lodge Moor, Sheffield.

YOUR correspondent G Cooper poses the question: “Why do you feel, when speaking to a customer service adviser, medical consultant or doctor, that you should apologise because you don’t understand their heavily accented English?” (The Yorkshire Post, November 28).

I cannot answer that question but I would be interested to know if that includes a Glasgow, Liverpool, Barnsley, Essex or any other regional accent.

I deal with any unclear speech by politely asking the speaker to speak more slowly which has sometimes been the case with female (if I may add a touch of sexism to your correspondent’s apparent xenophobia) speakers of the now widespread Estuary English.

Some of the best communicators in our language I have heard do not have English as their first language.

Anyone who has more than one language is to be admired, not sneered at. We should be ashamed of our own reputation as linguists.

Feel bad over animal vote

From: Tony McCobb, West Ella Way, Kirk Ella.

PARLIAMENT recently debated the Withdrawal from Europe Bill. The Green MP, Caroline Lucas, put down an amendment arguing that animals do feel pain and emotions. This amendment was supported by the Opposition parties (295 MPs). Shamefully, the Tories and DUP voted it down (313 MPs). Try explaining that to your pets!

Most observers agree that the Government is dispensing with EU animal welfare standards as they prepare for dodgy deals outside the EU. Yet it was the British government which persuaded the EU to introduce those better standards 20 years ago!

Bettys can’t claim rascals

From: Carole Atkinson, Selby.

READING with interest a letter from Susan Pownall (The Yorkshire Post, November 25), I agree with her comments. Bettys cannot take the credit for our Yorkshire Fat Rascals.

As an old herbalist, advisor and writer for Down Your Way magazine, also working in the early days for Sky TV and Discovery. I accumulated a great deal of knowledge about the subject of historic cooking, in England.