Politicians do not realise that the NHS crisis is affecting real people’s lives

My life has been put on hold for three months sitting in a chair resting waiting for the National Health Service to sort me out. My nine-week wait to see a consultant is finally coming to an end on Monday. Will I then be on a non-emergency list for treatment? Could I be classified as an emergency case? Either way it does not make any difference to the likely hood of me getting up from my chair and resuming my life.

Apologies do not compensate me for my lost nine weeks of my life, and neither do promises of better service in the future make me feel any better. Politicians controlling the healthcare in the UK are responsible for the misery they are inflicting. They were elected to run things for the benefit of the citizens. I hope that they think about the impact on the lives of sick people when they use phrases like "efficiency savings".

John Manning
Derbyshire

Ravi Jayaram’s article about the so called “winter crisis” in the NHS clearly explains the effects of long-term underinvestment and the lack of adequate forward planning.

The Government’s attitude to the situation is truly shocking – a couple of quick apologies from May and Hunt, delivered without any obvious sincerity or effective plan.

Surely we should all be out on the streets protesting about the situation and offering visible support to the strained workers within the NHS. What has happened to the people of this country that the impending loss of the NHS is being accepted without a visible fight from the electorate?

Lynne Clark
Tunbridge Wells

Surely frontline staff and the general public who opt for a flu vaccination could be offered the quadrivalent strain with the choice of paying a premium? Why have we not been fully informed about its availability? A cost cutting measure that may backfire.

D Willingham
St Albans

How does President Trump's attempt to ban the book on the operation of the White House sit with his Presidential duty to protect the constitution, including the First Amendment – freedom of speech? Let freedom of speech become more than a talking point.

Dennis Fitzgerald
Melbourne, Australia

I hope that Michael Gove has now had time to think about the repercussions of China’s refusal to take low-quality waste plastic from us. If he has, it is an opportunity for him to demonstrate his newly found green credentials in two ways. The first is by refusing to allow the UK waste companies to conveniently incinerate it, and instead find emergency capacity for it to be compressed or baled, and stockpiled for when he has also created the capacity to recycle it. We used to stockpile years’ worth of coal in vast amounts. It’s not rocket science.

The second necessary action is drastic measures to outlaw all but the most essential single-use plastic. He must be prepared to let big business squeal. The thinking public is sick to the teeth of this tsunami of plastic that threatens to overwhelm us.

Patrick Cosgrove
Bucknell

Boris Johnson should not be put in charge of Brexit negotiations. He should be put in charge of the NHS because only he knows where £350m a week magic money tree grows. He can, at a stroke, rescue the NHS from the crisis the Conservative Government funding cuts have caused.

Perhaps Johnson has set his sights on how Inheritance Tax has become a voluntary tax for, when the Duke of Westminster recently inherited an estate widely reported to be worth about £9bn, the Probate Office tells me (after an information request) that he paid no inheritance tax whatsoever! And neither did his father when he, then the 68th richest person alive, inherited in 1979.

It seems there is a magic money tree after all and, if the Duke had the slightest of social conscience, I am sure he would voluntarily pay the £3.6bn many think he owes. I think he could just about manage on a mere £5.4bn.

John Harvey
Bristol