PERSONALLY, I don’t like to see men’s knobbly knees paraded around the town centre, but I don’t advocate the banning of shorts or kilts.

Many of us find hoodie-wearing young men intimidating at times. Nonetheless, I see them as being much more often victims of fashion than potential assailants.

I have never been accused of sartorial elegance, preferring to wear what I feel comfortable in. Why, then, should I object to the wearing of the burkha?

The current debate about the burkha is spurious. The choice to wear it is not, in my view, a religious one – it is a fashion statement. As such, it is not a matter for legislation.

No doubt some women wear the veil in order to make a political point, but I believe that most wear it from choice as an expression of their identity, as do Scotsmen who wear the kilt. Or youths in hoodies.

There is debate about some women allegedly being oppressed by men in their families. A serious point, but how do we legislate against it?

Do we make it illegal for a husband to seek to influence his wife’s dress-sense, or for a father to object to his early-teen daughter wearing a micro-skirt and plunging neckline? Or, indeed, for a wife to insist that her husband changes his tie before going out?

If we start on this road, where do we end?

We don’t need a new law, just a clear statement that it is not illegal for a shop-keeper to insist that customers do not obscure their identity (think crash-helmets or hoodies), and that employers may impose a reasonable dress code on employees. Problem? What problem?

Bill Armer

Deighton

Going unequally private

THE Con-Dem coalition’s new NHS White Paper, Equity and Excellence – Liberating the NHS (July 12) will, I predict, fail to deliver either equity or excellence.

After promising not to tinker with NHS structure, Health Minister Andrew Lansley has gone back on his word. On top of his broken promise, the proposed reorganisation will be an immediate financial cost to the NHS, not a saving.

It is difficult to quantify the economic cost of low staff morale but this will undoubtedly be another cost. And there is no evidence that this reorganisation will deliver more efficient and effective health care making savings in the future.

Another coalition fallacy is that the NHS is being protected from cuts. Trusts have been told to make 15-20% cuts. As the Royal College of Nursing reported last week these are cuts to frontline staff, not just managers.

Abolishing local Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) (amongst others) and putting local GPs in charge of the budget (£80bn) buying our local health care may be appealing to some GPs.

From my experience as a former PCT Chair there were always a few enterprising GPs who wanted to take advantage of incentives to extend their businesses, by opening new surgeries in supermarkets for instance; but the vast majority of GPs just wanted to care for their patients. There is no evidence to suggest that this position has changed.

Even the British Medical Association’s GP Committee has concerns saying if GPs are to be forced into these new consortia they will need support to work together – costly locum replacements to cover when they are in meetings and not in surgery or on visits, not forgetting administrative, financial and contractual help.

In a bid to get local support for these changes, Jason McCartney MP asked Mr Lansley if the White Paper would help get consultant-led maternity care back to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary. He seemed happy when Mr Lansley assured him that this would be up to local GPs – but not before 2012. Let’s see if this happens before the next General Election, shall we?

However, most alarming are how these plans open the door for the private sector to both commission and provide health care in the NHS.

I have no problem with private healthcare companies being used by the NHS if they add value or capacity, but I vehemently oppose any ideologically-driven proposals that in effect hand over our much-loved NHS to the private sector.

Why? These companies are here to make money; the decisions they make – which patients are ‘profitable’ (people with existing, complex conditions are not), what medicines to use, will be guided by profit margins not clinical need.

Many GP surgeries are already owned by private companies like Care UK and Assura (soon to be owned by Virgin). Through GP consortia these companies will have increasing control of NHS funding including contracting with private sector Foundation Trust hospitals.

Mr Lansley’s soothing rhetoric that these companies are ‘social enterprises’ is misleading; according to the coalition, BUPA is a social enterprise company! In spite of equity having such prominence in this White Paper’s title these plans will deliver the opposite.

I have been a critic of my own Labour Party for not doing enough to reduce health inequalities. As the recent reports on health inequalities by Michael Marmot and the Audit Commission showed, we need to tackle the socioeconomic causes of health inequalities as well as improve access to health care for people who need it most.

The previous Con-Dem coalition’s talk of fairness is just that – talk.

Debbie Abrahams

Longwood

NHS on the ropes

SINCE the election, the Tories, with their ‘progressive’ partners, the Liberal Democrats, have curtailed people’s right to see their GP within 48 hours; undermined the 18-week referral to hospital principle for treatment entitlement, and demonstrated considerable reticence about maintaining Labour’s two-week appointment time guarantee for cancer sufferers.

Slowly, they are beginning to erode the achievements of the last 13 years. PM David Cameron rubbishes Labour’s legacy at every opportunity! Some of us remember the Tories’ crowning glories – the obscenity of forcing patients to wait, in pain, for 52 weeks to receive hip and knee replacements, and the barbarity of people dying on trolleys before they received attention in A&E

The coalition’s new health proposals threaten the very existence of our NHS.

With absolutely no electoral mandate, and totally contrary to their commitment to refrain from imposing disruptive, top-down change on the NHS, the ConDems propose to enact legislation that will take our hospitals out of NHS control, make them businesses which sell medical care, encourage them to enter partnerships with private health providers and drum up private health care business, allow our hospitals to fail and, presumably, close, and compel GPs to join a consortium to purchase medical procedures, eventually, one assumes, at the lowest possible cost.

Their plans will mean wasting valuable GP time in financial administration and management, time which should be devoted to real medical problems and increasing administrative costs by duplicating commissioning teams in each GP consortium.

All this, however, is just the beginning. While the end game is difficult to predict, we are moving towards a privatised health service, driven by the desire to slash government costs and make profit for private healthcare providers.

The very principle of a comprehensive and universal health care service, free at the point of need, is now in jeopardy. If you care about our NHS, one of this country’s greatest achievements, please act to defeat this evil now.

Barry Nottage

Netherthong

The loss of Woss

LIKE Katie Grant (Examiner, July 17) I too am glad to see the back of ‘Wossy’ on BBC TV.

If ever there was a vulgar, self-serving, egoistic media presenter, Jonathan Ross is that man!

Good riddance, I say, but don’t hold your breath. His cringe-worthy behaviour, so aptly described by Katie, will live on as he works for ‘peanuts’ on ITV.

The only way to get rid of him from our screens forever is to ‘vote with one’s feet’, and switch off or change channels whenever he appears, thus affecting the ratings.

His new salary of £1m a year is a high price to pay for smutty tosh!

Mr Grumpy

Almondbury

Imperfectly normal

THE report on the accident on Meltham Road, front page, July 12, states: “The crash is just the latest in a terrible spate of serious accidents on what appears to be a perfectly normal stretch of urban road....”

Of course it is a normal urban road and, if a complete stranger were asked to drive along it, he, or she, would have no misgivings whatsoever and no problems.

In addition, there have been no reports of mechanical or other faults on the vehicles involved.

So, there is nothing abnormal with the road, nothing abnormal with the vehicles, the only conclusion left is that we are dealing with abnormal driving?

Judging by personal experience, this is quite possible, in terms of lack of driving skills and lack of consideration for other road users.

Of course, the inevitable reaction of Kirklees to cover it in signs and, probably, road humps, is tackling the wrong end of the problem, as usual.

A L Jones

Meltham