Page 3 - Leading Article News Today

SIR – Labour’s desire to have the NHS working seven days per week is of course admirable (“Operations and scans at weekend under Labour plan for 24-7 NHS”, report, December 18). Sadly, maintaining the use of expensive assets such as operating theatres, radiology and pathology services 24 hours a day is wholly unrealistic given the large number of human beings required to run the organisation. When I operate, whether it be a major joint reconstruction or a simpler proc...

SIR – Pessimism, fatigue, historical ignorance, and an immoral attempt to appease an aggressor for whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the war crime of illegally transferring nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children: these are what threaten to bring about the end of the international liberal order. The 143 countries across all continents that voted for the UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/4, which declared the annexation of parts of Ukraine by Russia illegal...

SIR – The Rwanda Bill is nothing more than an expensive confidence trick (Letters, December 13). Immigration lawyers will exploit its loopholes and its deterrent effect will be negligible.

SIR – As an Israeli who moved from Britain, I want to share my view of the current situation here.

SIR – Surely the purpose of the Covid Inquiry (Leading Article, December 8) should be to establish how and where the virus started; how well Britain responded to it; and, relative to other nations, the mistakes made and how to do better next time. What we actually hear is a load of deeply personalised questioning, with little apparent purpose beyond blaming and condemning individual people – none of them medical, which is rather puzzling.

SIR – I do not often disagree with David Frost, but I must take issue with the premise of his article, “A Labour win will be a disaster. Too many Tories don’t care” (Comment, December 8).

SIR – The Acropolis Museum in Athens already displays excellent replicas of the Elgin Marbles (Letters, November 30), along with originals from other parts of the frieze. For conservation reasons, none remain on the Parthenon itself and there can be no possibility of returning them there. It’s just an argument about which museum should house the originals, and which the replicas. Why change present arrangements?

SIR – Yet another useless Cop exercise is under way (Leading Article, December 1), this one even more climate-busting than the others.

SIR – The concept of GPs having their own patients (Leading Article, November 30) – as envisaged by Nye Bevan – was destroyed in 2004, when NHS contracts were shifted from individual doctors to practices. Before that, a named doctor had cradle-to-grave responsibility for named patients. The doctor was the general practitioner; now it is a general practice that handles those who manage to get through the door. Often the care itself is carried out by locums. The dissatisfactio...

SIR – You report that a study in the British Medical Journal has found that patients are at risk from virtual GP appointments (report, November 29). It is always amusing when a statement of the obvious is confirmed by the results of a scientific study conducted by experts.