Noam Chomsky described the standard privatisation technique as “De-fund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, hand it over to private capital.” This is precisely what the UK government is doing to the NHS: its 350-page Health and Social Care Act 2012 was explicitly drafted for this purpose. In this context, what we need is a full return of the NHS to the public sector. The only current proposal with this aim is Caroline Lucas’s cross-party NHS bill, to which Jeremy Corbyn is a signatory. The bill was drafted by medical, public health and legal experts in addition to NHS staff and supporters.
Dr Alex Scott-Samuel
Liverpool
• Andrew Purkis (Letters, 8 September) makes a good case for lobbying by charities but ignores two crucial issues. Firstly, I want my donations to go to the poor and needy, not to well-heeled PR consultants in Westminster. If charities feel strongly about this they can raise funds for parallel non-charitable companies to lobby for them. Secondly, I can email 1,000 or more policymakers each day from my front room at negligible cost. If I have a good proposition I do not need to spend charitable funds promoting it.
Wally Harbert
Frome, Somerset
• Walter Palmer states that he wouldn’t have shot Cecil the lion if he had known he had a name (Report, 8 September). Can’t we name all the animals currently hunted, thereby preventing these people from shooting them?
Louise Morrey
Barlow, Derbyshire
• Regarding garden gluts (Letters, 7 September), our plums in London are a distant memory, cooked and frozen weeks ago. It makes sense to start in the south. Northerners will then have time to pop out for the added ingredients.
Suzanne Perkins
London
• This is the first time I’ve heard David Cameron say “the strike was entirely lawful” (Report, 8 September).
Mark Dudek
London
