If you’re going to fall sick, do it in Walford | Brief letters

Inequality | May’s imperfection | Tories and the NHS | MPs and private medical insurance | Agency work | EastEnders

In 2008 a government report, Mental Capital and Wellbeing: Making the Most of Ourselves in the 21st Century, advised that out-of-control debts are the crucial mediating variable between low income and mental ill-health. In 2010 Prof Michael Marmot’s Fair Society, Healthy Lives advised that health inequalities do not arise by chance, they cannot be attributed to unhealthy behaviour, they are caused by social and economic inequalities in society. Disregarding all expert advice, the government shredded the lowest incomes by £18bn and local government taxed them. Now there is a crisis in the National Health Service. By 2020 the DWP will have shredded another £12bn from the lowest incomes. We can expect worsening health crises.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty

• Theresa May (“Nothing’s perfect, May tells Marr”, 8 January) displays a contempt for the British public regarding the NHS. The issue is to know the level of imperfection she believes is acceptable. Could it be that some of the targets are now consistently being missed?
Roy Grimwood
Market Drayton, Shropshire

Continue reading... January 09, 2018 at 12:34AM