LETTERS

Healthy start

AT LAST, the Government has put real cash rather than warm words into the pay packets of frontline, hardworking and low-paid NHS staff who have undoubtedly paid a heavy price for austerity.

This must be seen as a first step to providing sustained and fair funding of this overloaded public service. GEOFF HEATHCOCK,

Cambridge. NHS cleaners, porters and catering staff will be on a minimum £18,000 a year. Will this lead to more outsourcing, as private contractors do not need to pay NHS rates? PAUL TRELOGGAN,

Sandilands, Lincs.

Tax by another name

WE ARE being softened up to allow another precept contribution to be levied, this time for the NHS. We are already paying a police precept and a social care precept.

Government agencies call them ‘contributions’, but they are actually extra taxes. Our taxes continually rise as our services fall. This treadmill is unsustainable . . . JAMES ROBERT-POULAIN,

Bexhill-on-Sea, E. Sussex. JEREMY HUNT wants a new tax to fund the NHS. What a good idea.

Oh, hang on a minute, isn’t that what all of our national insurance contributions are for? Where has all that money gone? ALLAN DAy, Basingstoke, Hants.

Charles’s kindness

ONE aspect about Prince Charles that was not highlighted in the Mail’s serialisation of Tom Bower’s book, Rebel Prince, is his gift for empathy and selfless concern.

When I was creating a research centre for the mental health charity SANE some years ago, I was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer.

The Prince found out on which days I underwent chemotherapy or had a transfusion, and a bouquet of flowers would be delivered.

At my lowest ebb, he invited me to tea and throughout a year of treatment, he sent thoughtful notes of encouragement.

His kindness and support certainly helped me pull through those dark times.

MARJORIE WALLACE, London N10. MAYBE Prince Charles’s private secretary was merely abiding by traditional protocol rather than following personalised instructions or making a special case, but it seems pompous and self- important to phone Tony Blair’s office to stipulate letters open with ‘Sir’ and be signed ‘Your obedient servant’ (Mail).

Is the royal office innately superior to Parliament? The Blair minion’s refusal to comply with the snooty edict is laudable. F. HARVEy, Bristol.

Don’t rely on Trump

COULD Britain rely on the U.S. under a Trump presidency to come to its assistance if confronted with Russian military aggression?

I’m not so sure, and President Trump’s congratulatory phone call to Vladimir Putin following his election ‘victory’ is an ill omen.

The U.S. President did not take the opportunity to roundly condemn the Russian leader for using a deadly nerve agent on a British street. In fact, the subject wasn’t even raised during their conversation.

The impact of this omission will, I fear, only serve to embolden Putin to continue his aggressive behaviour towards the West with impunity.

This bodes ill for countries bordering Russia, in particular, the Baltic states. Putin craves the restoration of the Soviet Union, which would make Russia economically viable.

Would the U.S. risk a conventional, let alone nuclear, war to liberate the Baltic states, which Nato is bound by treaty to defend? I doubt it.

PETER HENRICK, Birmingham.

Hull all at sea

IN CITING Hull to illustrate the impact of EU fisheries policy (Mail), Stephen Glover chose a bad example.

The decline of the port’s predominantly Arctic fishing fleet was the result of Iceland’s decision to extend its fishing grounds to 200 miles and had nothing to do with Brussels.

Copycat actions by Norway and the then Soviet Union did for Hull and damaged the fishing interests of Grimsby and Fleetwood. While Iceland offered generous quotas to the Hull trawlers, the owners preferred

to take UK government compensation and shut up shop.

The trawlermen were classified as ‘casual employees’ (as they switched from boat to boat) and received nothing. The men, their supporters and local MPs had to fight for more than 20 years to get compensation of £1,000 per man per year of service, capped at £20,000.

RICHARD TAGART, Haywards Heath, W. Sussex.

Lost over the rainbow

I WON’T be going to see Renee Zellweger perform as Judy Garland in her new film (Mail). When I went to the Talk of the Town in London’s Leicester Square to see Garland perform live in 1969, the band played the intro to The Trolley Song at least five times before Judy eventually appeared — but she was ‘unwell’ and unable to sing, so that was the end of the show. That June, I went to see Tony Bennett and in the middle of his concert, when the band played the intro to The Trolley Song, he said: ‘Judy, stand up and say hello.’ The woman in front of me stood up and that was the last I saw of Judy Garland. The following day, I heard on the news she’d died of an overdose.

MAURICE SCOTT, Eastcote, Middlesex.