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Look again at NHS cash

LETTERS from Des Morgan, whom I respect, are usually well-researched. However, I have to take issue with his letter of May 23 on NHS funding.

I agree with him that the ‘24hrs to save the NHS’ was as silly a slogan as any we’re seeing today, and it’s a matter of fact that Tony Blair increased NHS spending to a startling degree - to the European average, actually.

But Des is completely wrong to say that the NHS continued to be mired in debts. I was a full-time GP and chairman of a Primary Care Group at the time - I was there and saw the results.

One such result was GWH - too small even at the time if all you look at is beds, but it had vastly greater capacity than PMH for day surgery, and the deficit in size was quickly addressed by the construction (which we initiated) of the Intermediate Care Unit next door, not to mention the Shalbourne Suite, which was added much later.

Yes, GWH was a PFI, now derided but flavour of the month at the time. I was part of the team that went to the Treasury to plead our case - we were well aware that it was PFI or nothing at all, and the point was well made that under PFI the people that built it also had to maintain it for the next 20 plus years, so it was made of good quality concrete.

Back to the Blair increase in funding - as a GP, I was astonished and delighted to find that, over the next several years, waiting lists tumbled to, in many cases, almost zero.

That alone was an achievement unmatched in my 40 years of NHS experience. The essential point here is that all this was achieved simply by bringing us up to the European average - average, please note.

So Des Morgan is incorrect in saying nothing was achieved. I simply do not believe those who say ‘we can’t afford to spend more.’ Other European countries seem to manage doing just that.

But I agree with Des in that the NHS is in chronic crisis. The reason? It has long been well known that even if no changes are made, spending increases by two to three per cent each year, because of the ageing population with greater needs, and newer treatments enabling more people to live longer.

The Government is correct in saying it’s spending record amounts. Yes, increases of one per cent may lead to record amounts, but that completely ignores the widening gap between spend and need.

That is why so many trusts are no longer able to balance their books, and so many people are waiting in corridors, etc. etc.

Also we mustn’t forget the fact that Social Care funding comes from a separate budget and is under a separate organisation. This needs addressing ever more urgently.

So what is so terrible about aiming at the European average? Others do it - why can’t we?

It has been well shown that the NHS is actually the most efficient health provider compared with other systems. So let’s celebrate the many good things about the NHS and fund it sensibly, perhaps as an agreed proportion of GDP, rather than an ever-decreasing proportion as has been the case for the last decade or so.

DR CHRIS BARRY The Bramptons, Shaw, West Swindon

Time for terror debate
TWO years ago you published a letter in which I wrote “The UK is under no greater threat today than it was in 2005 when Muslims from Leeds detonated bombs in London and it only serves a political purpose to suggest otherwise.” 
I have no reason to believe anything has changed in the intervening period other than we have just experienced another terrorist outrage perpetrated in the name of Allah.
Three years ago I challenged Mr Cameron’s assertion in which he claimed increasing foreign aid and supporting countries such as Iraq. Libya and Afghanistan is essential to ensure the safety of our country from terrorism, and that ‘foreign aid’ does absolutely nothing to ‘keep us safe.’
Indeed, as we consider the situation today it is likely that terrorism will be a part of our lives for decades to come.
The notion that we should seek to ‘focus on those susceptible to radicalisation’ is for the birds and reflects a naive belief that a committed jihadist is amenable to an esoteric discussion on the rights and wrongs of being a suicide bomber. 
There is no need for the State to ‘understand’ the disconnect allegedly felt by many young Muslims - for too many years the touchy, feely brigade has pursued an agenda of appeasement  - it has not worked.
In 2015 then Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the execution of two ‘alleged’ extremist fighters on the basis that they represented a specific threat to UK security, and that he had exercised the country’s “inherent right to self-protection.” 
He claimed “It was necessary and proportionate for the individual self-defence of the UK.” 
As part of a wider debate perhaps we need to ask this question: “If it’s legitimate to execute British citizens in Syria on the basis they represented a threat to UK citizens (albeit that’s a bit of a stretch) then why is it not the right thing to do with the known ‘jihadists’ living in the UK?”
As for the silly political comments being made by all parties, I am reminded on the words of Mencken who said “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
DES MORGAN
Caraway Drive, Swindon

Rethink foreign policy
ELIZA Manningham-Buller, the ex director of M15, told the Iraq inquiry in 2010 that M15 had repeatedly told Tony Blair that attacking Iraq would substantially increase terrorism against the UK. 
Ministers were left in no doubt, she said, that an invasion would lead to more terrorism. Each escalation of Western military intervention has brought more such warnings. 
Yet today we hear Boris Johnson and others who supported the interventions accusing those who opposed them of somehow being complicit in the violence. Shame on Johnson.
War-mongering politicians have been saying terrorist violence pre-dated Western intervention. Not so. The Western governments built the embryo of terrorist groups in Afghanistan. 
Six months before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 the USA was funding terrorist groups there as confirmed by former CIA Director Robert Gates. 
US National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski tells us how he got Jimmy Carter to sign the order to back these extremist groups. 
Much of the $2bn that the CIA pumped in went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who the US ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann said was “an extremist and a very violent man.”
And we have Libya. We know that Libya is today a nightmare of competing terror gangs. Yet in 2012 the permanent US representative to NATO and supreme allied commander of Europe was saying, “NATO’s operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention.”
Surely it is time to break with a foreign policy based on smashing up societies to chase oil and US strategic power. Especially when Donald Trump seems intent on putting even more weaponry into the hands of Middle Eastern monarchies known for their support of jihadist groups.
PETER SMITH
Woodside Avenue, Swindon

Our views may differ
REFERRING to the recent terrorist atrocity in Manchester, Bill Williams says “It’s time to get the gloves off” in our counter measures, (It’s a fight for survival, SA May 26). 
I agree with that sentiment but I suspect we might have quite different views on what this entails. 
Bill’s references to the Armada, Waterloo and Nazi Germany implies that he’s thinking of more UK military involvement in Syria and elsewhere. 
I think this will just stoke the fires of hatred and it’s probably best to leave the locals to fight it out amongst themselves.
Whahhabism is an extreme form of Muslim faith which seems to have evolved into the murderous ideology of Isis and this finds its spiritual home in Saudi Arabia. 
So “getting the gloves off” actually means taking on the Saudi royal dynasty, stopping our very lucrative arms sales to them for a start and probably losing the oil they sell to us as a consequence.
Regarding the actual perpetrators, whether or not they go on to paradise after death, they leave their body parts behind or, in the case of the recent Westminster attacker, his whole body. 
We need a narrative to counter the ideology that persuades these people to sacrifice themselves for their cause. 
It shouldn’t be beyond our wit to devise some way of disposing of terrorist’s remains that is so abhorrent it will make these young fanatics think twice before offering themselves up for martyrdom. 
Announcing that from now on we intend to use their flesh as pig food might be worth considering and would certainly amount to “getting the gloves off”.
DON REEVE
Horder Mews, Old Town, Swindon

Scrap the laws now
I SEE the politicians are at it again, saying: “We will do EVERYTHING possible” to stop terrorism when what they really mean is they must do everything within the law. 
Well that’s not enough now.
I think  that laws must be scrapped, bent or changed to really win the fight.
If they are not we will still be in this position in 20 years time, so come on Theresa deport, intern and cancel passports. Now.
G DREWITT
via email

Fumes choke me
WHAT a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon it was but what a pity it was so many of our unthinking, uncaring, neighbours felt the need to pollute the air with barbecue fluid fumes.  
I am an older person with breathing problems, so for me  it was a case of  choke on the fumes or stay in doors in the heat with all the windows closed.
Isn’t there a law to control such things?
NAME AND ADDRESS 
SUPPLIED