Letters - Tuesday, February 15, 2022

As a retired NHS GP, I very much favour vaccination, but not normally coercing people to receive jabs, unless there is an incredibly compelling case.

The entirely predictable back down on compulsory jabs for NHS clinical staff was yet another example of a misjudgement by inexperienced and overconfident Tory MPs.

Just because a person is a billionaire or multimillionaire, has married into wealth, or has made a killing in banking or the stock exchange, does not make them a good person to be Prime Minister.

Someone who fully knows about heating and food bills, plus NHS waiting times, or the housing crisis, might be a far better choice.

Rev John Stott (1921-2011) was one of the most accomplished Church of England speakers and writers of recent times.

Although an evangelical, believing in the real biblical offer of salvation at the Cross, there was generally no firebrand frenzy or fundamentalist folly in his utterances.

John Stott encouraged balance when we face a range of other difficult moral choices and commended the long established tenets of ’Just War Theology’: an achievable objective, a proportionate response, an unambiguous moral case.

Did the case for compulsory jabs being given to clinical staff in the NHS fail on each of these fences, not just one, so that the Cabinet team once again look like a ragbag of incompetent actors on a low budget Carry On film stage?

The tragedy-farce, ‘Carry on Boris and Chums’, is surely nearing its end.

And it’s not a joke for some of Europe’s poorest pensioners: denied the much needed and promised Triple Lock State Pension uplift.

J T Hardy

via email

LANGUAGE

Can we get rid of raised ‘infection’?!

Barry Band’s article (‘Critically Speaking...’ February, 11) was excellent. They always are, and this one about how TV broadcasters and announcers have lapsed in speaking the English language with words abbreviated to ‘wanna’ ‘gonna’ as shorter versions of the proper words and we think maybe these will become a natural part of the English language.

Scary to think of and may I point out another fact: ‘Raised Inflection’ (or should I term it as ‘Raised infection!?) when more and more people are speaking each sentence as a question.

It seems to have seeped through from Australian soaps, US dramas and many other cultures having learnt English must surely have been taught that every sentence should be spoken as a question. A lot of celebrities speak this way, actors and many an interviewee. I hate it! It gets on my nerves and grates so much I have to mute the TV. Can we not rid our language of this horrible habit? Otherwise it’ll be a natural day to day thorn in the neck and we won’t be able to decifer whether someone is asking a question or just talking.

Clifford Chambers

Blackpool

COVID

NHS no longer free at point of use?

Evidently Government may charge £30 for a box of seven lateral flow tests for Covid. Until now, Conservative policy has supported NHS “free at the point of use.”

This principle is now evidently abandoned without a vote in Parliament. How would it work in practice?

A family with two children would have to pay £60, if all four members need to have two tests.

Obviously many families could not afford to be tested. How could schools be kept safe for staff and children?

Robert Holland

via email

RESIGNATION

Dick paid off well for failure

Dame Cressida Dick stood down as Metropolitan Police Commissioner after the London Lord Mayor, Sadiq Khan, made it clear he had no confidence in her plans to reform the service.

As happens all too frequently in the public sector, those “moving on” are rewarded for failure. In this case Dame Cressida Dick, aged 61, gets an early retirement package paid for by the taxpayer.

An eye-watering payoff of £575,000 plus a pension of £160,000 a year.

Meanwhile tens of thousands of people are having to choose between eating and heating.

Clark Cross

Address supplied

CRUELTY

West Ham should get down on all fours...

I’ve just watched West Ham players take the knee before the kick-off against Leicester as a symbol of unity against all forms of racism.

May I suggest to West Ham that, until the end of the season, their players don’t go down on one knee, but on all fours, out of respect for innocent animals and a symbol of our unity against all forms of animal sadism?

Dai Woosnam

via email

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