YP Letters: Back up NHS ombudsman by sanctions

We should all know our rights when it comes to NHS complaints. (PA)

Your letter from the Health Service Ombudsman (“Imperative we know rights on complaining about NHS”, The Yorkshire Post, September 25) makes interesting reading. As he points out if you are dissatisfied locally you can take your complaint to his office in London.

We tried to resolve a complaint locally here in West Yorkshire. This included a two-hour meeting with senior nursing officers and an independent consultant at the hospital. Dissatisfied we took it to the Ombudsman who found in our favour in a 43-page report.

This report revealed all sorts of things that the local arrangements – including the two hour meeting – had kept from us. We’d had to go 200 miles to discover things that had happened just down the road.

Yet there were no sanctions applied to the local professional’s deceptions – they did it with total impunity.

Surely they should be subject to automatic sanctions when they have been found by the Ombudsman to have acted in this way?

North Korea was aggressor

From: Arthur Quarmby, Mill Moor Road, Meltham.

The Korean War (1950-1953) was not a war in the normal sense of the word but was rather a police action carried out by the US and with UN backing, to repel the massive North Korean invasion of the South, to enforce the internationally-established border. The war established a cease-fire which still exists.

North Korea was the aggressor; The United States and the UN had plenty of opportunity to go on to defeat North Korea, but the purpose of the war was merely to repel the North’s invasion.

North Korea pretends to fear an American invasion. The US has had plenty of opportunity to invade North Korea both during the cease-fire and over the 60 years since, but has never done nor has any wish to do so. All the aggression since 1950 has come from North Korea.

The world needs a peacemaker who will knock heads together because if North Korea succeeds in provoking a nuclear conflict, the conflagration will not be confined to Korea, nor even to the Far East.

Doors injure as well as kill

From: Edward Grainger, Botany Way, Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough.

I read Jayne Dowle’s contributions, especially her “Every Thursday” offerings and regard her written thoughts as quite outstanding and highly sensible.

In her latest article on Cycling UK’s new campaign to teach drivers to change the  way that they open their car doors, as part of the driving test, she is so right to emphasise the relatively small number of deaths to cyclists (five) between 2011 and 2015 as a result of carelessly opened car doors.

Yet the situation is more serious in terms of numbers as the Government’s figures show a bigger problem because the number seriously injured in the same period is of the order of 3,500 with many more accidents going unreported.

As a member of Cycling UK it was interesting to note that at the beginning of March there  was the launch of a campaign with the intention to seek the support of the nation’s 45 police forces to try to put an end to drivers who dangerously overtake cyclists by not  allowing a safe distance of a minimum of 1.5m, additional to the 0.75m width allowed for the rider.

The campaign was first supported by the West Midlands force and since then there has been widespread support from other forces, including North Yorkshire Police.

All this with the intention to put an end to close passing for good and of course aiming to reduce death and serious injury.

Up with which I will not put

From: ME Wright, Harrogate.

“Splitting the infinitive in English seems to be the way to go” (The Yorkshire Post, September 25) – not for everyone, by any means.

Mention is made of an invasion of them since the 1990s; but they were causing consternation back in the 1950s, not least for one fondly remembered English teacher – or “teacher of English” as she would have it.

Several of us let her down by failing to fulfill her tireless Oxbridge-aimed efforts. I’ll not compound this by being swept along in the tide; possibly earning a shrill rebuke from the grave.

Dr Claire Dembry refers to the need for language to be taught in a way which reflects how it is used in the real world, including littering every English sentence with the mindless use of “like” – surely not?

Correction: In Monday’s The Yorkshire Post (September 25), Hilary Andrews wrote a letter (‘Transport woes driving travellers up the wall’) in  which she complained  about the taxi service provided by Amber at Leeds Bradford Airport.

However, Ms Andrews wrongly identified Amber  as the taxi firm involved in  her letter and would like to apologise for her mistake  and to the company for  any upset this has caused.