I only wish my girl had been a lucky survivor
I’M SORRY Tessa Cunningham feels upset when people say she is ‘lucky’ to have survived cancer (Femail). But I think she is lucky because I am suffering appalling grief at having lost my daughter Emma to cancer eight weeks ago, after a three-year battle in which she endured a double mastectomy and hysterectomy, cancer in her spine and finally in her brain.
She leaves behind two children aged five and six. My husband and I helped care for her and looked after her children throughout the hospital treatment. Now, after the pain of seeing her suffer, we have the agony of losing her.
During her illness, Emma rarely complained. She joked about her new bras and wigs — she lost her hair twice — and said she felt like a drag queen.
Her positivity was infectious and she amazed doctors by surviving long beyond their expectations.
A few weeks before she died, she looked in the mirror — at her scars and bruises, moon- shaped face, bloated neck and stomach — and said: ‘Mum, I don’t care what I look like. I just want to live, but could I be that lucky?’
She used the word ‘lucky’, so I think Tessa should feel lucky her cancer didn’t spread, she has gone on living and seen her children grow up, because Emma won’t.
Mrs B. HALL, Faversham, Kent.
Selfish adventurer
HOW selfish can you get? Explorer Benedict Allen heads off on his adventures, fulfilling his wanderlust with no way of being contacted, then goes missing (Mail).
Meanwhile, his poor wife is stuck at home trying to console their three children. Now he has been rescued from the jungle in Papua New Guinea, I hope he decides to stop scaring his family witless and starts acting more responsibly. Mrs GRACE THACKRAY,
Penparc, Ceredigion.
Deselect Remoaners
IF YOU take the job, you pay the price. There are nearly a dozen Conservative and even more Labour MPs who have ignored their constituencies and rebelled in Parliament over the Brexit Bill.
They are skating on thin ice and constituency party chairmen need to warn them that if there is any more stepping out of line, they will be deselected.
Some of these MPs claim they are being bullied. I’m not surprised if they feel they can defy the people who graciously sent them to Westminster. Those people have every reason to show their displeasure. ALLAN MULHOLLAND,
Doncaster. AS A former Conservative Association chairman, I would encourage the associations from which Remoaner MPs were selected to call an emergency meeting and propose a vote of no confidence.
The MP would be given the choice of loyally supporting the Government on Brexit, resigning their seat and standing as an independent candidate or continuing as an ostracised lame duck until the next election.
The five-year Fixed-term Parliaments Act requires support from 66 per cent of MPs to bring about dissolution, which Labour can’t get even with Remoaner support.
I think we will find that most of the rebels would value their parliamentary careers. Professor A. R. J. BENSTED,
St Briavels, Glos.
House of indifference
WHEN Andrea Leadsom gave a statement to the Commons last week on the progress of the sexual harassment investigation, the House was virtually empty.
Those MPs who were there were fiddling with documents, tablets or mobile phones. Hardly any appeared to be listening.
This is presumably a measure of how seriously MPs take this issue. Compare this indifference with the bellowing and bawling at Prime Minister’s Questions. TERRY MAUNDER, Kirkstall, W. Yorks.
Cushy course
I HAVE to highlight the profitable world of teacher training. I am on a maths Postgraduate Certificate in Education course and am being paid £35,000 for nine months of studying in the loosest sense.
No one on my course has any intention of going into teaching. Two have secured jobs at merchant banks in the City, a number are enrolled on MScs and see the PGCE course as a way to fund their further studies, and the others are just there until they think of something else to do.
Anyone who does go on to teach at a state secondary would take a massive pay drop and not hope to get back to this level for another eight years. We are being paid twice as much pro rata as the runragged teachers who are supposed to be teaching us in the schools.
In my tutor group alone there is £1 million of government investment and this is being replicated in hundreds of institutions across the country. What a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The Government needs to sort this out, not keep chucking money at people who want some easy cash with no strings attached. There’s a magic money tree in maths.
Name supplied, Oxford.
Taking a dim view
I AM relieved Leicestershire County Council is reversing its street lighting policy after it was revealed there have been more burglaries in the dark (Mail).
A serious assault took place near my home when the attacker took advantage of street lights being turned off at midnight. But a local councillor insisted this crime had nothing to do with the lighting policy and said there was no reason to leave lights on all night. Now doesn’t he look dim?
DAVID WORSNIP, Market Harborough, Leics.
Man up, parents!
THE sexism fuss about a paediatric surgeon describing a father as ‘manful’ for taking his daughter to a hospital appointment (Mail) is a sad indictment of modern mores.
Reporting such trivia on social media is compulsory for some people, who seek attention with feigned outrage and give not a moment’s thought for the consequences — in this case, the embarrassment of a man who benefits society far more than all the social media contributors put together.
ALAN DYSON, Folkestone, Kent. WHEN my daughter was ill, I focused on the words the consultant said about her treatment.
S. ANSCOMBE, Nottingham. THE parents who took offence at the word ‘manful’ appear to suffer from extreme hypersensitivity. The consultant simply made a clumsy attempt to engage in lighthearted small talk.
It’s a disgrace an apology has been offered. In future he will have to remember today’s generation had a humour-ectomy at birth.
He can’t win: if he had refrained from social engagement he would have been criticised as surly. Mrs LORRAINE WYLIE,
Bangor, Co. Down.
Silly snowflakes
HOW disgusting that students want the name Gladstone removed from a hall of residence at Liverpool university (Mail) because of historical associations with the slave trade.
How about making protestations about the slave trade of today — women and girls being smuggled into this country and forced into prostitution? Or perhaps that’s a little too nasty for the snowflake darlings to comprehend.
V. ROBERTSON, Nuneaton, Warks.