Blair’s reforms dealt a major blow to dentistry
In my opinion the clock was turned back on dental health by decades
REGARDING the breakdown of NHS dentistry, I felt it may be interesting to illustrate what has happened using my personal experience in the dental profession.
In 1964 I was a member of a small group of students who were the first intake into the first dental school in Wales. The idea was to produce dental surgeons in Wales and try to increase the size of the profession in Wales because the dental health of the nation was poor and severely short of dentists.
The plan worked well. We were very well educated and trained and a large number of us remained in Wales. This continued as larger groups of students qualified. We were all mainly in NHS contracts and, without doubt, improved the dental health of the population and were happy to do so. At this time we were paid for the work that we did but we all also added preventative dentistry to our treatment and advised on oral hygiene and diet.
All was well until Blair’s government imposed a new dental contract in 2006 despite the protests by dentists and the British Dental Association. Suddenly any patient who had neglected their dental health and had high needs such as many fillings, extractions and gum treatment had to be treated at the same payment scale as a regular attender who needed only one filling.
It should be remembered that it was not brought in by a Conservative government. Nevertheless, they have been in power long enough to have corrected the situation in England and likewise, the Senedd, with devolved responsibility for health, has been in power for even longer.
Many dentists realised they could not care for patients with high needs and so stuck with their regular attenders and/or switched to private dentistry.
In my opinion the clock was turned back on dental health by decades. It was those with high needs that we saw and treated and they would bring their children and the attitude of the family would change and gradually the community.
As I prepare to mark 60 years of dental education in Wales, I do so with an immense feeling of sadness at the state of NHS dental care and astonishment that it has taken so many years for the contract to be finally recognised as a disaster.
Liz Eales
Gowerton, Swansea
Inadequates who manipulated others
I JUST saw the ITV documentary on Gary Glitter.
Look, I’m not the brightest apple in the cart – I have brain fog from fibromyalgia and ME and am diagnosed autistic. My educational attainment is usually a pass and not much more after working harder than others on a course. But even I can see that Glitter and Jimmy Savile were two rather inadequate men who were just allowed by others to develop into dangerous people.
The vain way they both dressed, which was not justified by their way below alpha-male appearance strongly suggested to me that these two were deluded. How? By creeping up to the more powerful? By being pushy? By playing dirty games to eliminate competition?
These two are some of a long list of men who convinced themselves as well as everyone else that they were iconic. The only thing they were an icon of to me was confidence.
Many paedophiles pick on someone who they can easily have power over. In Glitter’s case, he chose under-age children in the UK, and, after being revealed, progressed to choose under-age children in poorer countries. In Savile’s case, he preyed on girls who were in institutions, and often lacked mental capacity or were labelled as having behavioural problems, so these girls didn’t get to do the choosing of people socially. They were in a weak position in society, and Savile instinctively knew they were easy targets.
Glitter was even devious enough to move to cheaper countries after being convicted in more expensive England, so he’d be able to buy more power and silence for his pound with the advantageous exchange rate in poorer countries like Cambodia and Vietnam.
These two men were either born with a dangerous personality – or they felt inferior as they grew up, and they used anything or anyone to triumph over their inferiority by becoming a public figure for a very perverted private goal: to target children and vulnerable teenagers/ adults. They knew their fame would open up a straight road to the unquestioned (due to their status, success and money) perverted privacy they desired, to use exalted adult status to prey on children for sex.
I don’t see these two men, or any paedophiles or sex criminals as bad, I see them as damaged and out of control – and were never stopped. Surely it is partly our way of life that is contributing to this sort of problem?
I do agree that some folk might just be born with a personality disorder but surely we should be educated to recognise the signs of a manipulative, dangerous person. Also, surely we should have awareness-raising programmes on
TV, showing classic criminal cases so that the public are more aware of manipulation?
Rhian Hewitt-Davies Rhydyfelin
Millions wasted on city’s cycle lanes
CARDIFF council, despite claiming to be permanently short of money, seems intent on spending millions of pounds converting the city’s roads into cycle lanes.
The claim is that this will encourage people to leave their cars at home and cycle to work or for leisure, but I’ve never known the roads so clogged with traffic. Journeys that used to take maybe 15 minutes take at least 20 minutes now, if not more.
Meanwhile the much-hyped cycleways appear to be empty most of the time.
What a waste of taxpayers’ money.
J Knowles Whitchurch, Cardiff
Trams a great way to travel around
WHY doesn’t the Welsh Government
reintroduce modern electric tram systems to our cities?
It heavily subsidises bus services with polluting diesel buses.
Bring about pollution-free environments with electric tram park and ride schemes. Inner city areas could have some older style trams as attractions, as in many European cities. Peter Henry Morgan Shrewsbury