Twilight shopping initiative confusion

The news about the new ‘Twilight Shopping’ initiative will cause considerable confusion for educated people in Bath, as the Chronicle says the shops will be open between midnight and 8pm, and then closed for the twilight hours. This confusion is becoming common in newspapers, whose journalists do not understand the Latin roots of several phrases in English. The ‘Meridian’ is the time of day when the sun is at its zenith in the sky, i.e. midday. We also need to understand that ‘post’ is the Latin for ‘after,’ and ‘ante’ for ‘before,’ so 12 - post meridian is midnight; and incidentally, there is no such time as 12am as midday should be recorded as noon, not ‘before’ or ‘after’; though perhaps we could suggest that midday could be abbreviated to ‘12m.’ Richard Carder Lower Oldfield Park Bath

Iwasn’t quite sure what to make of the letter by Adam Reynolds (Chronicle, 28 June). As someone born before the NHS came into existence I have seen many changes in the last 70-plus years, not all of them for the better. I can’t argue with the conclusion that adult social care should be part of the NHS. That is how it used to be. National Insurance began in 1909 to fund the newly introduced state pensions, and its use was expanded in 1948 to fully fund the NHS. For a number of years this worked well, until some “bright” politician decided it was a fund that could be raided to avoid increasing taxes, and it was no longer ringfenced. That has put the NHS income at the mercy of the Treasury ever since. But initially the NHS provided geriatric care for anyone who needed it. Thus when the NHS running costs were considered to be too high, the simple answer from Westminster was to make local authorities responsible, so that geriatric care had to be either bought in or provided in-house from the Government’s under-estimated compensatory allowance. Meanwhile, the Government stopped treating the NHS as a national body and created health trusts which were individually underfunded and thus created a postcode-lottery health service and NHS trusts sold off district hospitals and closed wards for a quick boost to their funding shortfalls. The years when governments had a love affair with PFI funding to make new hospitals cheap in the outset year but ruinously expensive long-term means that after these easy wins have been banked there remains an NHS money-pit with no get-out options. Because of this, the NHS accommodation that used to provide cradle to grave health facilities hasn’t got the real estate left to provide geriatric care like it used to, and politicians who can’t see past the next general election won’t invest in long-term plans, no matter how sensible they are. I refuse to be blamed for that situation. I have paid National Insurance all my working life. I have paid local rates, then Community Charge, then Council Tax since I came to Bath over 45 years ago, paying much more each year than my share of the costs of the council services I used. The fact that my generous contributions have been frittered away by local and central governments is outside my control and I refuse to feel guilty for that. I abhor the way this Government has abandoned the government grant arrangement leaving B&NES millions of pounds short of what they used to get, but it isn’t the students’ fault. I do think the buy-to-let landlords and the businesses who operate student flats should pay business rates, because if student accommodation wasn’t so wonderfully profitable, perhaps some of it could actually be used as much-needed social housing. JF Warren Oldfield Park