YEP Letters: August 25

City is never happy in its own skin

Richard Saberton, by email

Wakefield competing with Leeds? We really are into ‘David and Goliath’ territory now and in the real world David usually gets stomped!

Wakefield is okay but an end of term report would read “shows promise but could do better”. The city never seems happy in its own skin, always trying to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ or in this case Leeds.

It’s a sad fact that if you want to know what Wakefield will do in five years time, look at what Leeds is doing now.

Still look on the bright side, you may have to work in Leeds but at least you can come home to Wakefield!

‘Process changes the way NHS works’

Dr John Puntis,Leeds Keep Our NHS Public

On Wednesday August 22, NHS England (NHSE) held a public discussion in Leeds Town Hall on restricting access to 17 different medical interventions, including surgery for common hand problems, varicose veins, tonsillectomy and other conditions.

Although an important national consultation on major changes in NHS provision, poor advertising and summer holidays meant it was attended by only a handful of people.

The supposition behind the proposals is that doctors thoughtlessly recommend surgical interventions that are neither effective nor safe to hundreds of thousands of patients each year.

While there are excellent evidence based guidelines already available for who should have these treatments, clinicians must be compelled to make special funding requests for individual patients, and hospitals told they will not be paid for activity, in order to bring them into line with NHSE designated ‘best practice’.

The Royal College of Surgeons objects to interventions that improve quality of life and reduce pain being designated as ‘low value’, pointing out that not treating some conditions may lead to much more costly complications later on.

Revealingly, the current limited list of ‘low value interventions’ echoes that drawn up by management consultants McKinsey when asked after the 2008 banking crisis how the NHS could save money.

NHSE plans to expand rapidly beyond the current list of 17 restricted treatments.

The public need to be aware that this process fundamentally changes the way the NHS works and strikes at the heart of the doctor patient relationship, where clinicians assess a patient’s needs and wants, recommending treatment based on sharing evidence of risks and benefit.

The current projected savings are minute (0.16% of NHS budget), but a key objective of NHSE is to establish that the NHS will no longer provide some treatments, and you wont be able to have these unless you pay to go privately.

I would encourage your readers to visit the NHSE website (https://bit.ly/2uNYQOg) and feedback their views through the ‘consultation on evidence based interventions’.

Project Fear Two is being crafted

Brian Johnston, Burmantofts.

If the suggestion, (P Bye, YEP, Letters August 18) that in the event of a second referendum, the question should be ‘do you want the UK to be absorbed into a EU super state, had been asked in the first referendum, then the answer would have been overwhelming.

Project Fear Two is being carefully crafted by a motley crew of politicians, the Bank of England with a gang of multinationals in the pocket of Brussels.

None of us believed that two years on, we would have to re-fight the same battle. The Chequers plan is a ‘con’ even though it will be thrown out by Brussels, demanding even more concessions.

The EU will not tolerate a UK with competitive trade threat on its very doorstep, hence Brussels obsession to ‘punish’ us (politics before economics). This is well known, except by our inept negotiating team, always giving to Brussels bullying.

The EU is a political construct first, and economics is but the handmaid to the goal of a super state. The referendum said ‘no’ to that, so what right of the Remainer brigade to thwart the will of the people.

Scaremongering is pathetic

Derrick Bond, Shadwell

First we had fruit and veg growers, now we have football club chairmen claiming Brexit will be terrible for us all.

You would have thought a club chairman would want to save money on players, but apparently they are more than willing to pay extortionate agents fees to buy players from abroad.

All this fake and naive scaremongering is pathetic. After Brexit, the cabbages will still get picked and the footballs will still get kicked.

Corbyn is no Attlee or Bevan

Chris Sharp, Leeds 25

With reference to two contributors on August 22, Jeremy Corbyn and his cohorts are not and never will be able to think or act like Attlee and Nye Bevan, they were giants of the political world.

Jeremy Corbyn and his entourage are pygmies in comparison. Furthermore, to suggest researchers are being paid to make him look anti Semitic is at best silly and desperate. The proof is in the pudding .

The man is not fit to lead a party never mind a government.

Compulsory voting?

Michael Gillian, South Elmsall

AFTER months of reading arguments and counter arguments as to the ‘validity’ of the referendum result, I begin to wonder what the result might have been had we followed the example of Australia. There, under federal electoral law, it is compulsory for all eligible Australian citizens to enrol and vote in federal elections, by-elections and referendums. Failure to vote brings with it a $20 fine.

Using the Australian voting system, whether the 28 per cent who did not bother to vote in the 2016 referendum decided to vote to remain or to leave the EU, the final result would have produced a majority of the electorate, not just the 72 per cent who turned out then, in favour of ‘in’ or ‘out’ of the EU. As a result, we would have a definite answer to the question on the ballot paper.