In 1999, we had a student from Ghana on a summer school at Oxford who needed immediate hospitalisation. At A&E, he asked if they wanted to see his passport and medical insurance. The nurse said: “Sir, all I need to know is that you’re sick.” Let’s keep that kind of NHS (‘I thought they were killing me’: NHS trust halted asylum seeker’s cancer treatment, theguardian.com, 21 January).
Andrew Shacknove
Oxford
• It is not possible to own too many books (Tom Gauld cartoon strip, Review, 19 January). It is, however, common not to have enough space for all your books, a problem that I and many others experience.
Now that I have reached peak book, I have made a deal with myself. I still buy books if I want them badly enough. But for each one I buy, I take two to the local charity bookshop. A drawback is that the two I move on are generally smaller than the one I acquire, so no net gain in space may accrue. This works for me, though it may not for others.
Dr John Kanefsky
Morchard Bishop, Devon
• Your letter writers’ piling in to criticise the pernicious influence of Ofsted (22 January) is welcome and justified; but to inject some balance on the subject, school headteachers and senior managements must accept their responsibility in colluding with its demands for so long, to the detriment of children and true education.
John Stringer
Chichester
• Readers should not delay coming to see the attractive Markeaton footbridge (Letters spread photo, 22 January). It is to be demolished with the widening of the A38.
Keith Burchell
Derby
• How very appropriate that Antony Gormley’s statue of a naked man (Letters spread photo, 21 January) should be placed in one of the arches under the promenade at Folkestone: when I was a schoolboy in the town, in the 1970s, they were a notorious haunt of flashers.
Brian Ferris
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
• If elderly people were to be prohibited from driving (Letters, 22 January), the roads here in Norfolk would soon be empty. Bliss!
Jane Moth (aged 65)
Snettisham, Norfolk
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