Rich of Tories to complain of the NHS being a ‘cash-cow’ - Yorkshire Post Letters

Certain Tory MPs, high-on-the-hog, are heard to be complaining that the NHS is a cash-cow, an overly-bureaucratic organisation which behaves as though it has an automatic entitlement to demand endless public funds to pay for its bloated inefficiency.

Isn’t this a bit rich coming from people who enjoy very generous salaries with regular increases, gold-plated pensions, lavish expenses, second homes, second jobs, subsidised meals, subsidised drinks, all paid for by us - and yet who seem to spend most of their time fixing deals for friends, holidaying and breaking the law.

If they have their way and the NHS is privatised by stealth then be certain of this: the main beneficiaries will not be the public. They will be the CEOs of companies that benefit from lucrative contracts - and their friends, the very MPs who are pushing the privatisation agenda.

When Tory MPs are struggling to pay their energy bills and are striking over poor pay and conditions, when they are showing signs of public service rather than greedily shoring up their own fortunes and generally sticking two fingers up to the rest of society - then I will start to have respect for them.

Peter Rickaby, West Park, Selby.

The Archbishop of York's article, The Yorkshire Post, December 12, on our approach to immigration is typical charitable fantasy.

Not one word on the practical problems encountered due to the sheer number of illegal immigrants entering this country.

Theology today offers no solution whatsoever regarding jobs, housing, cost of living, healthcare etc etc, all relevant to everyone's daily life.

The Church of England's influence on matters of importance diminishes by the day, much to the chagrin of an ageing congregation, a situation senior leaders appear blissfully happy to ignore, content to pontificate from a position insulated from life's realities.

Roger Backhouse, Orchard Road, Upper Poppleton, York.

It's become as predictable as the robin on a Christmas card. Every Christmas some journalist will dredge up the tale of the conspiracy to abolish Christmas regardless of facts. In the USA Fox TV is a regular for this type of nonsense but here GP Taylor gets wound up with his mixed up balderdash.

Looking around Poppleton's roads I see no evidence of any downgrading of Christmas. Local churches have services, tree festivals and concerts. There's even more Christmas activity visible if I venture into York.

Sure, I can wish for less Christmas tackiness but for many that's part of the ritual and who am I to stop them?

So spare us the hackneyed old refrains. GP Taylor has been known to write something original. Let's have it please.

Ken Cooke, Ilkley.

He might be a Remainer, but he is also a very successful businessman. Richard Branson says the UK has become hamstrung by red tape and trade barriers caused by Brexit and it is no longer an attractive place to invest new money.

Just another in the long line of examples of ‘Project Fear’ becoming the reality.

All countries have experienced the pandemic and continue to suffer from Putin’s war, but only the UK suffers from Brexit.

In another neck of the woods, fearing for any Switzerland-style arrangement with the EU and the loss of their tax haven access, right-wing MPs of the European Research Group are desperately putting pressure on the government to expedite the Brexit Bill.

Brexit has already caused an untold amount of trouble and expense: it is time to reverse it.

Thomas W Jefferson, Batty Lane, Howden, Goole.

Tony McCobb likens Brexit to a straightjacket (The Yorkshire Post, December 9) with a deluge of contentious claims. Well, if it is a straitjacket, at least it’s ours and we can work out how to escape from it.

He would prefer to jump into the EU’s straightjacket. How many times do I have to say that if you rejoin the EU you adopt the euro, with its one size fits all straightjacket, and you become part of a failed economic model and lose your democratic autonomy - forever?

It’s a bit like Hamlet’s “undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns”. We’ve no idea how our economy would react to it and once in we wouldn’t be able to get out. Hamlet went on, it “puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of”.

Whatever problems Tony McCobb thinks we have, we can deal with them and continue to be more successful than the Eurozone, not even Houdini could escape from that straightjacket.