Letters: NHS spending on agency staff reflects a failure of workforce planning

SIR – The scandalous inflated rates that NHS hospitals are paying for agency doctors (report, December 12) reflect the significant and long-standing under-provision of staff.

Such imbursement must tempt some medical staff to retire early and take advantage of more flexible work and better incomes.

Should not the Government intervene with stricter caps on rates for locum staff and agencies, to prevent further millions of pounds being leached out of our fractured NHS?

Michael K H Crumplin FRCS
Wrexham, Denbighshire

SIR – The Government’s response to pay claims from NHS staff is that pay raises are offered in line with the conclusions of the independent pay review bodies.

I have worked in the NHS for 39 years and have lost count of the number of times the government of the day did not implement recommendations from these bodies in full because of the economic circumstances. If recommendations had been honoured in the past, perhaps we wouldn’t be where we are today, with staff feeling undervalued.

Dr Mike Copp
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

SIR – As a former GP, I found visiting a hospital A&E department with a sick friend on Saturday night to be a depressing and shameful experience.

There was a fleet of ambulances queuing up outside, unable to discharge patients; the waiting room was heaving, including with little babies and the elderly, and there was a four-hour wait to be seen.

Since Covid, it has become clear that GPs are playing a diminishing role in the NHS, many using it as an excuse to avoid seeing patients altogether. Many of the tasks that they now perform could equally be performed by a specialist nursing team. This would free up hundreds of millions of pounds to go where they are really needed – to hospitals. Meanwhile the problem of bed-blocking could be solved by requisitioning hotels for the use of convalescents.

Andrew Norman
Poole, Dorset

SIR – Congratulations to Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary (Interview, December 11), for actually starting a conversation about the shambles that is our health service. The sad fact that he is himself stuck on a waiting list says it all.

Mike Metcalfe
Butleigh, Somerset

SIR – Whenever the Conservatives have tried to make changes to the health service, the Labour Party has shouted that the Tories are going to privatise “our NHS”.

Now, at long last, Labour “vows war on the health unions”. Does this mean we can actually have a sensible discussion about this and finally do something about the money pit that the NHS has become?

Ann Wright
Cambridge

Postie self-sabotage

SIR – We have reluctantly decided not to send any Christmas cards this year – and I suspect that we will not be the only ones.

The Communication Workers Union has shot itself in the foot. Will the Post Office survive the year without its income stream from Christmas cards? And how will the union explain to all its workers that they have lost their jobs due to its actions?

As no postie is coming to my door anymore, I will not put out the usual Christmas envelope. I will give it to the refuse collectors instead, who have worked through thick and thin.

Richard Quicke
Hazeley Lea, Hampshire

SIR – Royal Mail states that its new barcoded stamps can be used to watch videos or send birthday messages. Don’t we already do that via existing social media?

Sue Oakey
Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire

Heaving Navy guns

SIR – The origin of the encouragement “two, six, heave” (Letters, December 12) lies in the drill for manhandling a muzzle-loading gun on the deck of a British warship.

Every man had a specific role – to load, swab out and so on – and was numbered for ease of reference. Crew members two and six would be required to ensure the gun was hauled “close up” to the gun port once the order “two, six, heave” was given by the gun captain.

The phrase remains part of the folk memory of the Royal Navy, despite advances in gunnery technology.

Cdr Ian Whitehouse RN (retd)
St Tudy, Cornwall

SIR – My father, who was in RAF Coastal Command during the war, told me that the origin of “two, six, heave” was the opening of large sliding hangar doors – two men at the end and six along the side.

Patrick Firebrace
London N1

SIR – I understand that this call originates in the practice of rewarding ordinary seamen in the 17th and 18th centuries for carrying out some particularly strenuous chore such as stepping new masts or mounting cannon, and would apply both to the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy.

Two and six refers to the cost of a firkin of ale. Half a crown (or two shillings and sixpence) was required to persuade the sailors of those days to do anything in unison.

The practice was discontinued after “bad ale” caused seamen to “heave” over the side on an increasing number of occasions.

Subsequently “two, six, heave” became a derogatory comment on the beer sold in ale houses throughout the major seaports until replaced by the rum ration.

Robert Grindal
Reading, Berkshire

SIR – Bernard Walton (Letters, December 12) asks where the call of “one, two, three, lift” came from. All I can say is that it definitely did not come from the Army.

In my time, I had a sergeant who became unreasonably upset whenever a squaddie incautiously guided: “On three: one, two, three, lift.”

It ought to have just been “one, two, lift”, as “one, two, three, lift” would properly be “on four”. This mattered a great deal to our man of precision, and whenever he heard the call he’d angrily demand that we carry our load all the way back to where it came from and start over.

Robert Frazer
Salford, Lancashire

BBC drift

SIR – Simon Heffer (Hinterland, December 3) is correct that there is “simply too much trash” on the BBC.

He rightly singles out for praise David Attenborough’s “stunning wildlife series”, but even these are marred by excessively loud background music.

One way to restore the BBC’s intellectual heft, while achieving its goal to “inform, educate and entertain”, might be to revive The Brains Trust. There was an attempt to do this some years ago, but as it was given the graveyard slot at 11.15 pm it failed to reach its viewing targets and was prematurely cancelled.

Thanks to the BBC, older generations were able to watch and listen to Bertrand Russell, C E M Joad, the Huxleys, Jennie Lee, Jacob Bronowski, Isaiah Berlin, Marghanita Laski and others. Do younger generations not deserve something similar today?

John Birkett
St Andrews, Fife

DVLA time

SIR – I have just received a letter from the DVLA regarding a licence application. It starts: “Thank you for your recent correspondence.”

I sent my letter in May.

Andrew Knight
Cleator, Cumbria

Boarder's ruin

SIR – The letters (December 12) on drinking habits prompted me to dig out my grandfather’s cocktail book for Gordon’s gin, probably dating back 80 or 90 years.

The quantities are extraordinary: a Gin Rickey calls for a wine glass of gin, a piece of ice and the juice of half a lime in a large glass, topped up with soda.

I have been unable to drink gin – or most other spirits – since consuming an entire bottle on the last night of the Christmas term when I was 16. My whole dorm were in a similar pickle, and we were all suspended. The following term, our history master upbraided us: “You daft lot – fancy getting caught.”

Tony Parrack
London SW20

SIR – Our elderly Tonkinese cat controls not only drinks time but also drinks quantity. Each evening around 6 pm he finds me and loudly demands that I sit down with a glass of sherry so he can sit on my lap. He objects even more loudly if I rise for a top-up.

Peter Davies
Lyndhurst, Hampshire

A canine friend can keep you warm this winter

SIR – May I recommend the smooth fox terrier as the green solution to winter weather worries?

If one is popped under the duvet for 10 minutes before bedtime, everything becomes super-cosy without the need to draw on electricity. The only downside is that, with three of the mutts and a wife who likes to retire early, I am frequently exiled to another (unwarmed) bed.

Tim Wright
Rampisham, Dorset

SIR – According to the National Grid, at 2.30 pm on Sunday the electricity demand was 39.6 gigawatts and the generation was 33.3 gigawatts.

The demand was balanced by transfers from the EU. Just over 60 per cent of generation was supplied by fossil fuels, 18.7 per cent by nuclear and biomass, and 5.2 per cent by renewables. Coal generated 3.3 per cent and wind 3.1. The cost of generation was 42p per kWh.

I am not a Luddite. I installed 18 solar panels (mostly Chinese-manufactured) in August  that have produced between 1.2 and 38 kWh per day, and my electricity supplier will pay a “generous” 3.5p per kWh for any excess electricity supplied to the grid.

I am aware that wind produced 20.9 gigawatts on one day in November; however, on Sunday it produced 1.21 gigawatts. Wind is an unreliable source of generation. Politicians of all parties need to stop gaslighting the public and acknowledge that our electricity supply and demand are at a critical juncture. Britain will need gas to balance the demand for at least a decade, otherwise the lights will go out.

Colin Seymour
Skegness, Lincolnshire

SIR – I wonder if Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is being a little hasty in his dismissal of the Cumbrian coal mine as economic and diplomatic idiocy (Business, December 9).

As late as November 2021, Oxford Energy Society estimated that 79.8 per cent of UK steel was produced using the blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace method, which uses coking coal to produce coke.

In any case, there are alternative uses for such coal deposits, underground coal gasification being one example. Opinions vary as to how significant the environmental impacts are, and the various options should be subject to meticulous, unbiased analysis.

It is interesting to note that the drive for developing these technologies further was undermined by the availability of cheap gas and electricity – hardly the situation we find ourselves in today and unlikely to change for some time to come.

Nigel McKie
Helston, Cornwall

SIR – Is it too much to hope that the cold weather and high fuel costs will send people back to work, to luxuriate in the warmth that the boss is paying for?

Janet Harris
Adelaide, Australia

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