'The NHS: a national treasure, but not without its flaws' - your letters, plus George Bickley teaches cadets to fly in a 1940s throwback

From the NHS and work life to tax, local services and public safety - your letters this Monday.

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Supporting image for story: 'The NHS: a national treasure, but not without its flaws' - your letters, plus George Bickley teaches cadets to fly in a 1940s throwback
PICTURE FROM THE PAST: George Bickley, an officer in the Air Training Corps, with ATC cadets at Pendeford demonstrating how to start a Piper Cub, in about 1949. George is on the left, pointing. Picture: Alan Bickley (George's son).
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Let’s be honest about the NHS

Does the NHS being a national treasure stop us and it being honest about not everything being right within it? 

Yes funding is a problem, closing cottage hospitals was a mistake, governments not telling the public straight taxes must rise to fund it is a mistake, but of course funding will always be a problem. 

With the number of inquiries into failings within the NHS proving it is not perfect that has to be balanced against the fact that there are 1.5 million people working within the English NHS alone, so can it ever be perfect? There are no easy answers. I suspect that the NHS only manages to carry on with a lot of goodwill.

But just a thought, when hospitals are overwhelmed we are always shown queuing ambulances, patients in corridors and staff looking at computer screens. What if half of those staff were instead looking at patients. Would that help?

Peter Steggles, Midlands

Get out of bed and into work

Get them out to work

That’s where life begins

They might not be that keen at first

But they’ll thank you in the end!

Get them out of bed

So that they might claim the day

Instead of lying there like the dead

As the day just slips away!

For they must be as ‘aweary, aweary’

As Tennyson’s Mariana

Each day grey and dreary