LETTERS

Pay for proper care

I AGREE with Amanda platell that we should tackle what appears to be widespread abuse in care homes (Mail). Yet the wider question is — why do families pay £5,000 a month to place their loved ones in these dire institutions?

Surely £60,000 a year would cover the cost of nursing care at home or the salary of someone who actually does care for their elderly relative.

Thousands of parents of disabled children forgo careers, decent homes and occupational pensions to do just that, many of them women who are also looking after elderly relatives.

It is not the grown-up children who are powerless and betrayed when the £5,000-a-month care home fails, but the parents who have been dumped there by their children.

And they have the pleasure of paying for that privilege out of their own hard-earned cash . . . oops, sorry . . . their children’s inheritance. JACQUELINE TUNNEY,

Croydon, Surrey.

Home front

MY GRANDDAuGHTER Heidi is a beautiful two-year-old with quadriplegic cerebral palsy following a brain injury. She will never walk, talk or be other than tube fed.

Her parents are remarkably resilient and positive. Managing her medical conditions, treatments and transportation to appointments has become a way of life.

As Heidi grows up, she will need more equipment: a wheelchair, standing frame, bathing support, a lift, hoist and special bed.

We provide specialist housing for our ageing population and owe it to young families, devoting their time to children with specialist needs, to do the same for them.

I’m watching Tv’s DIY SOS with new eyes. MArGArET A. BUCKLEY, Holmfirth, W. Yorks.

Put Brits first

THE Government seems to be putting the interests of expats, who have deserted the country, and Eu citizens ahead of Britons living here in the Brexit negotiations.

Have ministers already decided to maintain the surcharge of 3.2 million Eu citizens on the uK population while keeping the 1.2 million expats in the manner to which they have become accustomed?

They must think those 4.4 million votes could be a deciding factor in the 2022 General Election. The Government should remember the last time it played political games it fell flat on its face, and could again.

roBErT J. EVANS, Birmingham.

No chance to shine

pROTECTING children from feeling inferior (letters) is not new. In my first year in secondary school, I was top of my class for art.

On parents’ evening, my family looked for some of my work in the art room. finding no examples, they queried this with my teacher, who replied: ‘Susan’s work is so far above that of her classmates that I didn’t feel it fair to show any of it.’ I was deprived of a rare chance to shine. There is nothing new in the idea we should all be brought down to the lowest common denominator. SUSAN CoLEMAN, Tamworth, Staffs.

Right to be pushy

If THERE is any criticism of pushy parents (Mail), it is not shared in my area, where there are many afterschool classes aimed at gaining your child a place at a grammar school.

Are these so-called pushy parents any different from those encouraging their children to go to football practice or ice skating sessions?

PETEr HILL, Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Unsporting decision

MY SON was a victim of another child’s pushy parent. The nine-yearolds were at a Cubs’ chess tournament. My son had taught himself a new opening move, which he used to his advantage over the first few of his bemused opponents.

He was then disqualified for ‘unsporting play’ by an organiser, whose own child was next to play my son. Twenty years later, he still remembers the indignity of disqualification for playing well.

HELEN BUSSEY, Lincoln.

Wrong foot forward

I AM surprised at the design for a bronze statue at parliament of Emmeline pankhurst (Mail). The suffragette is depicted striding out — but with her right arm going forward along with her right leg.

Remarkable as Mrs pankhurst was, I doubt she would have got far in life if she had tried to walk like that. BErNArD TAYLor,

London SE3. THE planned bronze statue of Emmeline pankhurst seems to have captured the moment when she auditioned for the music video for Genesis’s I Can’t Dance. N. BroWN, Basildon, Essex.

Our gift to India

I HAD travelled thousands of miles around India when I met a professor of history at the university of Delhi. I asked her which was the greatest legacy of the British in India: the railways or parliamentary democracy?

She replied: ‘Neither. The greatest legacy of the British is the English language. It has been, and will continue to be, the making of modern India.’ EDWArD MUrrAY SMITH,

Auckland, New Zealand.

Red lights spell danger

I HAvE sympathy for readers who feel they have been caught out by hidden speed cameras (letters).

The Daily Mail has reported there are dramatically more red- light traffic offences in the fosse park area of leicester than anywhere else in the country. I have been prosecuted twice for alleged offences in this area