NHS would avoid crisis if staff were better paid

IT beggars belief that again the headlines in the press are that the NHS is facing the worst possible winter in ten years.

Change the record, plan ahead, anticipate the worst possible scenarios (as any manager/director of a business would do) in order to make things run smoothly and show a profit – even if very small.

Considering Coventry boasts the biggest trauma unit in the West Midlands, the most comprehensive up-to-date super duper cancer unit (the Arden Centre) and a hospital that is a quarter of a mile long from start to finish, why are things going so rapidly wrong?

May I suggest that if decent living wages were paid to the coal face workers (clerical and admin), the ‘white collar workers’, then the hospital may stand a chance of becoming efficient.

All the Band 2 staff are the nerve centre of the NHS Walsgrave. Instead of management being paid huge salaries, recognise these under recognised staff (i.e. receptionists who are the shop window) or the NHS nursing auxiliaries now known as health care assistants (HCAs), telephonists and general factotums.

Cut off the management (that have often been brought in from outside industry) and have all hands to the pump.

Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency is the secret of any well-run business or organisation, method, and then things would run like clockwork. It isn’t rocket science to realise that people are living far longer now than say 50 years ago, so why is the NHS so underprepared?

It goes from crisis to crisis, debt becomes greater and hence during the winter months the hospitals will become utterly chaotic. So what are we paying our NI contributions for? Not so we can be accused of bed blocking. Let’s have some hands-on training, learning and general efficiency will prevail.

The lead comes from the top. What chance do we stand under the current Tory government? Jill M Pinks Tile Hill South

Wordplay has little to do with Mrs May

MR Jock Brownlee may well be right about Prime Minister being “out of her depth” (Letters, Oct 17), but it’s not because, as he suggests, “she can’t tell the difference between aesthetic and ascetic” or because “she even wants to give Jeremy Corbyn a P45”.

Of aesthetic and ascetic, he says, “one is a noun adjective she gives us free of charge” and “the other, of course, is an adjective of the taste for the finer things of life”.

Well, in my book, the wooliness or the first definition helps no one, least of all Mrs May, to a better understanding of aesthetic, and the second is downright misleading.

An ascetic is someone who, though he or she may very well have a “taste for the finer things of life” abstains, usually for religious or spiritual reasons, from not only indulging that taste, but partaking in many ordinary bodily gratifications. As a practising member of the Anglican church, Mrs May will have a very good idea what an ascetic is.

As Mrs May’s wish to give Mr Corbyn a P45, we can assume, I think, that as P45 has the details of an employee leaving work, Mrs May would want to see Mr Corbyn get his sooner rather than later, and certainly long before he is in sight of what Mr Brownlee calls “the top job”. Kevin Cryan Radford

Why am I still being given old £1 coins?

IT has been well publicised that the old-style pound coins will cease to be legal tender on October 15.

I am amazed that during the last week, assistants have attempted to give these coins to me in my change. In two cases they seemed unaware that the change was taking place. Surely they should be briefed to keep the old style coins separate and not reissue them into circulation?

I was a shop manager at the time of the conversion to decimal currency in 1971. That was a real challenge but we made sure that all of our staff were trained and in fact helped to educate the public during the period when both currency where legal tender. Bill Sutton Chapelfields

Let’s have British Pensioners’ Day

IT would be nice to see a British Pensioners’ Day when we could have discounts on various items such as food and drink and taxi fares. More likely to get a British Students Day, I believe. Ian Harris Radford