No Christmas

Sir: To follow up on Chris Ashton’s ‘the real War on Christmas’ (Spec Aus Christmas Special) might I provide support for his article in so far as the email I received from my CBA relationship banker? The message contained in said email was a contorted affair: ‘as we approach the holiday period I just wanted to take the opportunity on behalf of [myself] and the Commonwealth Bank to wish you and your loved ones a safe and festive season…’

No mention of Christmas, even though the omission was glaring. I replied to my banker with ‘thanks […], but you don’t have to skirt around using Christmas, it’s not an offensive word!’ He replied that he agreed but that non-use of the word Christmas was CBA policy.

What a shame that a happy and joyous time of the year is now deemed offensive to others, where no offence is taken
Mathew Wilson
Adelaide, South Australia

Foreign affairs

Sir: Isn’t it thrilling to read Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had such an enjoyable time in Peru (Spectator Lima Diary 03.01.15) and saw fit to drop $200M of taxpayer funds into what many of us believe is a useless exercise i.e. the Green Climate Fund.

Unfortunately, I am one of a growing number of punters who happen to have noticed temperatures haven’t been rising and virtually all predictions of climate doom have come to nothing.

Perhaps the Foreign Minister didn’t have a chance to read The Institute of Public Affairs masterly book Climate Change The Facts 2014, sent to all MPs during December. This publication presents solid scientific facts from a diverse range of appropriately qualified and independent scientists which, funnily enough, explain why nothing has happened to temperatures and why the gloomy predictions of alarmists/warmists have become no more than an expensive joke.

Maybe one day the climate change (formerly global warming) wake up call will hit the political/bureaucratic/media classes. Until then, more waste and mis-allocation of resources and, of course, more glamorous talkfests attended by foreign ministers and their fellow junketeers.
Chris Harrington
St Ives NSW

This turbulent surgeon

Sir: I have taken Meirion Thomas to task before in your letters pages, saying that since one third of NHS professional staff are immigrants, it would seem churlish to deny health visitors access to the very doctors we have poached from them.

Meirion Thomas is not a whistle-blower (‘Bitter medicine’, 3 January) — he has not told us anything that our own prejudices haven’t already informed us of. And quite rightly he is being encouraged by his colleagues to zip it. Is there any business, let alone political party, that would tolerate such pointless, if not divisive, mudslinging from within?
Dr Tom Roberts
Derby

Medical cover-ups

Sir: Freddy Gray’s piece on Meirion Thomas last week is a worrying reminder that medicine, despite its dependence on scientific truth, still hides truths of other sorts when they prove inconvenient or embarrassing.

Forty years ago a pig-farmer friend visited his wife and newborn baby in a local hospital, where there had been an outbreak of a ‘mystery illness’. To one side my friend noticed an empty drug bottle and remarked within the hearing of medical staff that the drug concerned was that prescribed by his vet for E. coli in pigs. Within moments he was bundled into a nearby linen store and told that he had to assure staff that he would not discuss the matter anywhere before they would release him. Within days my friends’ baby had died and the hospital then announced an outbreak of E. coli .

The treatment of Meirion Thomas must make us wonder whether, if the medical profession is reduced to dismissing competent practitioners rather than facing inconvenient truths, it will further limit the extent to which the benefits of modern medicine can be shared.
Peter Inson
Colchester, Essex

Healthy scepticism

Sir: If there is consensus among the political parties not to privatise the NHS as James Forsyth suggests (Politics, 3 January) let us at least be glad they are currently reflecting the will of the British people. As for whether it is unhealthy, that depends on whether their legitimate concerns over privatisation can be addressed.

The examples of American healthcare, our energy companies, railways and misbegotten PFI ‘initiatives’ show us that whatever efficiency savings might or might not accrue, costs always rise steeply and the poorer get priced out. Everyone gets smart new seats, but a margin for profit is taken out of the pot that could have gone on services. Vested interests and commercial gain easily become key drivers behind whatever deals are set up, to the detriment of front-line service quality. And the ostensible benefit of ‘customer choice’ evaporates when you want a drug the insurance company doesn’t want to pay the pharmaceutical supplier for. So far there has been an unhealthy silence over these problems, which politicians must break if they are to reform our ‘national religion’.
Dr Warren Reed
Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex

Burchill’s blanket dismissal

Sir: Julie Burchill (‘Fashion statement’, 3 January) says middle-aged women who ‘make a fuss’ over their appearance have nothing of substance to recommend them. Very often they do, from Margaret Thatcher to Vivienne Westwood to your next-door neighbour (in varying degrees), but that approach means you may never know. I agree slogans on clothing are often trite, dull, pretentious and by definition repetitive, but to shoot the messenger for their appearance before you hear what they have to say is glib and often cruel — a bit like slogans in fact.
Simon Lapthorn
Camberley, Surrey

Bowled out

Sir: The recent correspondence on the subject of the fatal cricket accident which in 1751 prevented Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, from succeeding his father George II as king in 1760, has failed to mention that this was the first known instance in cricket history of play stopping reign.
Tim Rice
London SW13