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

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

Each day just like any other!

Get them back to work

Give them something to get up for

It might seem a great idea to shirk

But it’s a killer in the long run!

Challenges and memories

That’s what life is made of

Some view work as ‘the enemy’

Something to steer clear of!

And as a youngster I must admit

I viewed it all with dread

Work!? The very thought of it

I didn’t want to leave MY bed!

But now I’m retired, I realise,

While amazed at how quickly time passes,

That going to work enriches our lives

In more ways than one as it happens!

Alan Jones, Halesowen

Nasty comments from tax haven

Re the recent report of the printed ramblings of Jim Ratcliffe regarding defenceless refugees. His "nine million on benefits" must have really pleased him as he lolled about in his tax free billionaires Monaco base. The nine million could be reduced by one if he felt that taxing people like him pay a wee bit out of their enormous loot stashed abroad. 

Most jobs in the UK pay a tax to help keep the NHS etc going, not attacking those desperate to escape poverty and to get a job.

Stop stirring up an already delicate situation and just keep counting your "well earned billions".

Roger Cain, Midlands

Our grit bin saga is a sad joke

Am I to believe that Dudley residents, at the first snowflake become Captain Super Wellies?

Do I see those families who can't even clear their drives, rushing to an orange bin? Do workers, desperate to get sliding cars onto the road sprinkle grit? Do mothers wander down to the bin with their bucket and pick to hack out a chunk of concreted grit before taking kids to school?

That therefore only may mean that pensioners leave their perch on radiators turned up to the full, making victory signs to Miliband. Do they cast aside their winter lagging and walkers and join a phalanx of oldies singing: "Hi ho ho... it's to the bin we go." prior to falling on their ancient wizened rear ends?

Honestly, the grit bin debate has become a joke. These things were stupidly removed at the behest of some genius in the council offices who did not understand that even if something is not widely used, heaven help the furore when it's removed. Anyway folks, they are now resurrected in all their orange beauty.

Alan M Etheridge, Sedgley

Police need to keep us updated

Strange how police always criticise online 'misinformation' after major incidents in UK. 

They need to realise that this is their own fault. If police issued proper statements to keep public informed and not just the cover-all 'the incident is not terror related', when they know it is, then people would not post online anywhere near as much. 

In the eyes of the police we are indeed mushrooms to be kept in the dark.

Chris Smith, Midlands

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