What the hell is this civilised nation coming to?
Was the title of an article about the difficulty of finding a dentist within 20 miles of Plymouth and the shortcomings of the NHS, but still accepting the idea that healthcare should be free.
By Martin Hesp of the Plymouth Herald
Civilisation is hardly recent phenomenon
Martin Hesp (“What the hell is this civilised nation coming to?”, September 11th) cannot possibly be implying that nobody on earth was truly civilised before Karl Marx suggested that healthcare should be free, but it is hard to see what else he might have meant.
Bernard John Toolan (First response)
Some of our rules are totally insane
The determination of Alison Hernandez (“No such thing as a ‘minor’ crime”, September 7th) to make sure that the law is not brought into disrepute does her credit, but some of our PSPO’s are unjust and many of our Health and Safety laws are insane, as Martin Hesp (“What the hell is this civilised nation coming to?”, September 11th) pointed out.
When my mother-in-law (may she rest in peace) was in hospital with cancer, we had to take her soup in a vacuum flask and feed her ourselves before it went cold because the nurses didn’t have time to feed every patient by hand and we were not allowed to heat up the cold food that we often found next to her.
Enforcing ill-advised and unjust laws is more likely to bring the law into disrepute than ignoring them.
Bernard John Toolan (Second response)
Green is not a good colour for display. Blue stands out better