Letters: With NHS dentistry in disarray, replacing a filling privately can be cheaper and quicker

SIR – I appreciate that not everyone can afford to pay for private dentistry but, contrary to many myths, it isn’t that expensive, and is clearly preferable to DIY dentistry (“Elderly fear having to resort to ‘DIY dentistry’”, report, December 26).

Over a four-year period with my NHS dentist, I still paid out over £500, half of which was for a crown, plus three fillings. I looked elsewhere when I was told I needed root canal work, which my dentist no longer did, and was referred to a private practice that would charge me £800. Covid restrictions started soon afterwards.

Once they had lifted, I went to a local private dentist. He said I didn’t need root canal work. In the two years I’ve been there, I’ve paid out £350, and that included treatment for a particularly troublesome tooth culminating in an extraction. I went in late December when I lost a filling, which was replaced for £35. If I could have got an NHS appointment, the charge would have been £65.20.

Keith Appleyard
West Wickham, Kent

SIR – I am a retired dentist and ran my own NHS practice for 30 years. The old piecemeal system, whereby the harder you worked the more you earned, had its faults, but it did not discourage dentists from providing NHS treatment – as the current one does.

As for DIY dentistry, that would literally end in tears because teeth have anything up to four roots of varying curvatures and cross-sections, so attempting to extract one with a pair of pliers would be doomed to failure and further pain.

Martin Henry
Good Easter, Essex

SIR – I am lucky still to have an NHS dentist as I have kept up with my six-month check-ups all my adult life.

As a result of breast cancer I have to take a daily pill which can have adverse side effects, one being osteoporosis. To prevent this condition I am given an infusion of another drug, which in turn can have more adverse side effects, one being necrosis of the jaw.

In order to avoid this, I have to get my teeth checked regularly, and my dentist prescribes for me extra-strong fluoride toothpaste. The over-the-counter price is £15. Every six months I have a prescription for six tubes. This is not a waste of tax payers’ money (“NHS spends £65m a year prescribing everyday items like shampoo”, telegraph.co.uk, December 24).

Mary Ross
Warrington, Cheshire

Punitive Tory taxes

SIR – Those of us who supported Liz Truss to be leader of the Conservative Party will not be surprised to read that the Centre for Economics and Business Research has predicted long-term damage and low growth as a result of her successor’s high-tax policies (report, December 26).

Presiding over a swollen and inefficient public sector financed by taxation of productive business is not a recipe for success. TotalEnergies is cutting its North Sea investment by £100 million in 2023 after Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, ramped up a windfall tax on oil and gas giants. Mr Hunt is also continuing with Rishi Sunak’s hike in corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent in April.

The Government’s taxation and energy policies continue to target private landlords, while early retirements are forced by the tax system on senior doctors and others because of the unjust limit on pension pots.

When will members of our current Government remember that they are Conservatives?

Michael Staples
Seaford, East Sussex

Shadow of Radio 4

SIR – Readers who have voiced their disappointment at the Christmas television schedules (Letters, December 27) should spare a thought for those of us who prefer their entertainment via the radio.

Had BBC Radio 4 decided to rebroadcast the entire Christmas Day schedule from any year in the 1980s, then I would have considered that a real treat. It would undoubtedly have been the best Christmas Day schedule for the past three decades.

For many years now, Radio 4 has abandoned many of the plays, serials and events that were once part of its staple offering. What remains is a shadow of what went before. At a time when the station is trying – and failing – to attract a new, younger audience, it is abandoning the very things that would help it appeal to such listeners. 

My family had no history of listening to Radio 4, but when I was a 12-year-old in 1974, one episode of Saturday Night Theatre had me hooked for the next 40 years. There is a clear appetite for podcasts and audiobooks, and there was a time when Radio 4 was the only outlet for such material. It has willingly conceded these areas to competitors, and is losing its audience as a consequence.

Bob Cook
Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex

Wreck of HMS Captain

SIR – You discuss the wreck of the ironclad battleship, HMS Captain, which sank off the coast of Spain in 1870 (“Hunt begins for wreck of maritime disaster”, report, December 18). Quite apart from the technical and social significance of this revolutionary ship and her sinking, the personal impact should also not be overlooked.

The loss of HMS Captain was very much a family tragedy. Her captain, Hugh Talbot Burgoyne VC (grandson of General “Gentleman Johnny” Burgoyne) was not only a personal friend and professional ally of Captain Cowper Coles, the ship’s designer, but was also the son-in-law of Sir Baldwin Wake-Walker, who, as Controller of the Navy, commissioned Britain’s first ironclad, HMS Warrior (now preserved at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard), a decade before Captain Coles was commissioned.

Like his father-in-law (who had been an admiral in the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of St Jean D’Acre), Burgoyne was a dashing and exotic figure, winning his Victoria Cross in a commando-style raid during the Crimean War before becoming a captain in the Chinese Navy. Given his support for Coles’s campaign for the Admiralty to build a vessel to his own design, Burgoyne was a natural choice to command this “supership”.

Despite the reservations of Britain’s leading naval architect, Sir Edward Reed, and senior officers, such as Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, Burgoyne claimed to be very satisfied with the ship’s sailing qualities. In fact, on her final, fateful voyage, he took not only his friend Coles, but also his wife Evelyn’s younger brother, Charles Wake-Walker.

Charles and Coles both went down with the ship, and while Burgoyne was seen clinging to wreckage by the handful of survivors, his dead body was later recovered. However, in a twist almost worthy of Dickens or Trollope, out of this personal and professional tragedy for two great Victorian dynasties, love still triumphed, as Charles’s eldest brother, Baldwin, would marry Coles’s daughter, Fanny.

Hadrian Jeffs
Norwich

The hazards holding back British nuclear power

SIR – In his letter (December 26) on the virtues of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), such as those being developed by Rolls-Royce, Bruce Gawler has overlooked the problem of the radioactive waste that will be produced and will have to remain on site until it can be safely removed for storage or disposal elsewhere.

This highlights two problems. First, there are still no facilities for the long-term disposal of higher-level radioactive waste. To date all such waste produced in Britain remains in storage above ground, the bulk of which is at Sellafield – often described as the most hazardous site in Europe.

Secondly, the proliferation of SMRs, along with their associated waste-storage facilities, will greatly increase the number of vulnerable sites requiring round-the-clock high-level security and protection.

Rod Donington-Smith
Keswick, Cumbria

Old man and the pea

SIR – When a toddler, our granddaughter would not eat peas at any price, so Grandad rose to the challenge (“Magic sprouts”, Letters, December 25).

I wrapped a single pea in layers of smoked salmon, which she loved, so I was confident that this trick would succeed.

To my astonishment, within about two seconds, the pea emerged completely unscathed.

Granddaughter one, Grandad nil.

John Marsh
Sheringham, Norfolk

SIR – When my daughter was quite young, she started swimming lessons at school. After a while she was disappointed because she still couldn’t swim.

The day before her next lesson I asked her to help make a jelly for teatime. When we had finished I asked her to cut up a banana to go in the jelly. I then suggested that if a banana could float, I was sure she could.

Success. Next evening, she was a happy little girl who could swim.

Sheila Smith
Farnham, Surrey

Retreating Church

SIR – In his Christmas speech, King Charles paid tribute to the many churches that operate in this country for their outreach work, which provides people with food, love and support, among other things (“Core values endure with King Charles”, Leading Article, December 26).

The Church of England is a major contributor to this work through its parish system and the dedication of so many parish priests and their supporters, who give of their time and expertise largely on a voluntary basis.

The value of the parish system comes from the fact that it can reach out to all sections of the community across England. Yet, as many of your correspondents have pointed out, the parish system is under threat – not, as you might imagine, from external forces, but from within.

Due to financial pressures there is a move in many dioceses to accelerate the closure of parish churches, including many in rural areas, and move to bigger parishes (with some being described as “super parishes”), and reduce the number of clergy. These moves fly in the face of all the evidence, which clearly demonstrates that once you remove the “local” from a community, support in all its forms drops away.

It would be naive not to expect some churches to close, but surely there is a strong argument to resource and build on a system that has been tried and tested for over 1,000 years and is still capable of delivering. If, however, the Church continues to withdraw, there will be consequences for the country. The social outreach work undertaken by Church supporters is bound to diminish.

“The House of Good”, a report by the National Churches Trust, estimated the monetary value of the work undertaken by all churches in 2021 at about £55 billion per annum. At a time when pressure on social services is increasing, the gap as volunteers fall away will have to be filled and the public purse may have to pick up the bill.

The time has come for Parliament, which has devolved power to the Church, to scrutinise what is happening.

John Brydon
Norwich

One for all

SIR – Steve Vine (Letters, December 22) writes of the concoction his mother gave him to enhance his performance in a sports event. My mother – not normally a competitive or conspiratorial soul – slid me a packet of glucose tablets just before the final of the under-11s 100-yard race.

As we runners gathered at the start, I took my tablet, whereupon each of my rivals asked if they could have one, too. Of course, it would have been rude not to share.

I didn’t win, and probably never would have, but I didn’t help myself by negating whatever slim competitive advantage my mother was trying to give me.

John Bath
Clevedon, Somerset

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