From home working to the NHS, our readers from across the county give their weekly take on the biggest issues impacting Kent in their letters to the editor...

Time to end working from home

These days, waiting for your call to be answered, seems to take an eternity.

In the past, (whilst waiting no more than five minutes), I would imagine a busy call centre with banks of telephonists, efficiently dealing with customer calls. Wall-mounted digital displays informed the team of calls waiting as well as average call waiting times. Team working was the key and the poster stating The Customer is King was displayed loud and proud.

Today, whilst waiting 45 minutes for my call to be answered, my dystopian imagination sees a different diorama.

I can see a laptop on a kitchen table somewhere in suburbia. My call inaudibly flashes below the split screen images of an online shopping site and a long weekend in Prague. The kettle has just boiled, the bacon is nice and crisp, and Bargain Hunt is about to start. I can see no one, but there is a framed poster on the wall of Blondie, advertising the 1978 hit 'Hanging On The Telephone'.

Last month, Sir James Dyson condemned government plans to extend employees’ rights to work from home as “economically illiterate and staggeringly self-defeating”.

It's time to get everyone back in the office.

Gary Freestone

NHS is sacred cow that needs to be slaughtered

Once more we have reached annual winter crisis in the NHS. Was there ever a time when it wasn’t in a mess this time of year?

We hear the usual platitudes from politicians on all sides about spending yet more money on this inefficient, disorganised money pit.

They call it the jewel in the crown of public services and how it is the envy of the world. However no one else has copied our version and its outcomes compare poorly to other developed nations. No amount of money is ever enough to satiate its appetite yet the debate always centres around its budget. If ‘the definition of madness is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result’ then we are truly mad.

'Unfortunately we have become an entitled generation of people and the rot is deep. Our country is nigh on bankrupt and yet the demands we place upon our ‘free’ services are monumental...'

There are never enough doctors, nurses, beds, paramedics, etc. The vested interests line up to protect this bloated institution. Politically, no one will really ever try to get to the root of its problems because it is just too problematic for them. Little empires have been built in the back offices and they prevent meaningful change.

Cowardly politicians dare not touch it and too many of us - its users - abuse its services. Free at the point of use has led to abuse and overuse of the system. Ambulances that are called out for little more than cuts and bruises, A&E and GP services the same.

The service largely shuts down at weekends. GP practices are only accessible five days a week, if you are lucky enough to get hold of them. Perhaps if more of them worked full time, that would help and less form filling, more common sense and a commitment to care rather than seeing their custom as a nuisance to be kept at bay.

If the NHS was a private company, we as its customers would have taken our business elsewhere years ago.

To place the blame at the feet of our current leaders is not enough. Sure, they must take their share of the blame but does anyone really think Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has the answers? Are the public ready to see this sacred cow slaughtered and remade for the 21st century? If they aren’t and I suspect this is the case then we will continue to receive a mediocre service which costs a fortune and is almost beyond criticism.

I believe the time has come to introduce some charges towards its running costs and your right to free at the point of use healthcare should be matched by responsibilities not to use it frivolously. Charge £5 to see your GP, that would sort out those who don’t really need to be seen, the same for A&E. Had an accident at work, on the roads, playing sport, in the garden or when drunk or drugged up, then you or your insurance company should pay and it might encourage us all to be more careful.

Unfortunately we have become an entitled generation of people and the rot is deep. Our country is nigh on bankrupt and yet the demands we place upon our ‘free’ services are monumental.

We lack the leadership necessary to get us out of this mess and it isn’t going to get any better any time soon.

Neil Cox

Standards of nursing have declined

I would like to reply to those who replied to my letter regarding nurses going on strike.

At almost 80 years of age, I have been in hospital many times and 22 years ago my life was saved by the NHS when I had a triple bypass but sadly have seen the sad decline of nursing standards over the years, where I see nurses standing around their desks laughing and joking whilst patients are calling out for help.

The nurses from years gone by looked on nursing as a vocation, not simply as a job, and valued the health and well-being of the sick and elderly far more than they do a pay rise. They would not have gone on strike in a million years.

I was in the Navy for 17 years and we were not allowed to go on strike, as indeed are the police. The same should apply to all those in the public sector.

Conditions and hours on old war time destroyers were far worse than today's nurses could ever imagine all for a pittance of a wage.

Nobody is forcing the nurses to go on strike and by doing so are putting the lives and wellbeing of their patients at risk. If they are not satisfied, get out and go and get another job but don’t put patients' lives at risk simply because you want more in your purse.

In the private sector there are millions who get paid a darn site less than the nurses who cannot go on strike and the taxes they pay are keeping the nurses in their jobs. As far as I’m concerned, the respect I had for them went a long time ago and through their selfish actions they are doing the public a great disservice.

Mr S. C. Anning

Get facts right on NHS

I would be most grateful if you would publish the following facts in relation to the inflammatory comments made in the Secret Thinker column:

“…an unaffordable luxury” – You get what you pay for – in 1948 income tax was 45%. I am not suggesting we return to those days. However, studies show a less than 2% increase will fix the situation.

“The level of mismanagement…” we all need to remember the huge NHS organisation spends around 5% on management compared to very large private sector organisations and a similar disparity is found in the amounts spent on research and development which has a direct effect on bringing about change or not.

“…control [should be] devolved to smaller, more local units. This has already happened in more than one iteration – Health Regions and Local Health Authorities, followed by PCTs and Health Trusts. Since then the later introduction of Integrated care boards replaced clinical commissioning groups in the NHS in England from July 2022.

Why is it that some people imagine changing structures will fix the fundamental reality that we need to spend more on Health and Social Care including operational management? During this time many really good, hard working and dedicated people in these various forms of Commissioning organisations lost their jobs and received redundancy payments to be reemployed later in a differently guised organisation, burnt out, retired early or simply left in disillusionment. Changing the structure does not necessarily change the way operational managers manage nor improve the systems, processes and outcomes. That requires more to be spent at those levels – the sharp end.

The author points out “Life expectancy will continue to increase, placing more stress on the creaking system every year, and the rate at which ever-more elaborate (and therefore expensive) cures are discovered and developed will continue to grow exponentially”. Again, I must ask why in this situation spending has not kept pace. There is no doubt NHS management has improved and could be improved further. Such improvement will better serve the public if they occur at local level. Let’s also not forget the immense pressure faced by everyone working in the Health and Social Care sector brought about by the pandemic. Not only do we owe them all a debt of gratitude we should also ensure that press reporting is based in fact not merely political ideology.

Joe Wall (retired nurse and senior manager)

Cut perks to fund pay rise

When public sector employees argue that their remuneration lags the private sector, they put no value on the superior benefits, such as employer pension contributions, sickness benefits and holidays, etc, that they enjoy.

Therein lies a potential solution to the current pay disputes. By reducing these generous benefits and using all of the money saved to increase salaries, it should be possible to increase the current salary offers, to both surpass private sector wages and match the rate of inflation, without imposing any additional burden on taxpayers.

Derek Wisdom

Don't let strike impasse continue

With the accumulation of strikes virtually paralysing the country, coming so soon after we became liberated from the constraints initiated by Covid-19, the irony of our present situation has not gone unnoticed.

At least during lockdown, the trains were running, albeit at half its normal service.

And the post was being delivered to people's homes. NHS workers too, were operating at full capacity and there was a feeling that we were all prepared to make concessions in order to beat the pandemic.

The change in our circumstances at present is dividing public opinion as to whether or not to support those taking part in industrial action or to rail against them for the disruption they're causing.

It seems the government's intransigence to bring about a resolution may have serious consequences if the impasse is allowed to continue much longer.

M. Smith

Standing in line makes us a laughing stock

The British are famous worldwide for queuing. We really do like queuing, don’t we?

However, now we have entered a new year I feel our proclivity towards standing patiently in line has gone too far. We are queuing to get into Dover (possibly other docks too); we are queuing up to cross European borders whereas EU passport holders just stroll through; we are queuing to leave our own airports and likewise when we return because the Border Force are on strike. I’ve seen pictures of orderly queues at food banks and soup kitchens.

Last, but not least we are now queuing at hospital A&Es across the country. I see no let-up in 2023 but I do see the rest of the developed world - maybe all the world - laughing at us as we queue more and more.

It is easily summed up: broken Brexit Britain.

Robert Boston

BBC bigots impose prejudices on us all

The BBC has been running a risible series of contributions from its presenters, claiming that the organisation is free of any bias, yet recent surveys prove precisely the opposite.

Quite apart from the blatantly slanted reporting which dominate the news broadcasts, examinations of the output from the drama department reveal that their programmes present a totally bigoted view of history, and indeed of contemporary Britain, in which our national heroes are denigrated, past achievements are ignored, and, in particular, ordinary, patriotic Britons are targeted as being the villains of our island story.

The Empire is consistently decried as being somehow uniquely wicked, the far worse record of those of other nations being ignored. The slave trade, unquestionably a great evil, is regularly portrayed, without any effort being made to mention that eventually the Royal Navy drove the slavers from the seas, releasing hundreds of thousands of people from captivity. The recent concentration on the proposed restitution of the Benin bronzes never points out that these were seized after the massacre of British envoys, and their African bearers, Britain then putting an end to slave trading in Benin. Great figures from our past are treated as villains as, for example, a suggestion that the Bengal famine of 1943 resulted from racism by Churchill, when in fact we sent large shipments of food, despite our own wartime shortages,

If the BBC is to be believed Britain lacks diversity, despite the fact that it is now one of the most mixed societies in the world, where three of the most significant offices of state are held by members of ethnic minorities. The political opinions expressed by characters in these productions all reflect the views of the liberal elite, except where the villain of a piece is shown as right wing and absurdly reactionary. Brexit is consistently disparaged and treated as motivated by bigotry against foreigners, rather than the rejection of rule by unelected bureaucrats.

The BBC is dominated by those who have always hated their own country, the heirs of the intellectual idiots who supported the Bolsheviks, or the fascist powers before the Second World War. These adherents of the woke ideology infecting the West are incapable of understanding that most of the social theories they learnt in universities bear no relation to the realities of the world. It begs the question of why the UK expends such large resources on educational institutions who deliberately brainwash their students in this manner.

No denials by the BBC changes the fact that the greater part of its output is based on the views of a very small minority, who are allowed to impose their prejudices on the rest of us.

Colin Bullen