Surely the most worrying crisis in the NHS is the threat to the only doctor most of the public ever meet, their GP.
General practice is the bedrock of the service, performing 90% of the work for just 8% of the budget. A succession of governments has made this once fascinating, challenging and rewarding profession so unattractive to newly qualified doctors that its demise and that of the NHS is virtually inevitable.
One-third of the GP workforce will retire within the next five years but there are nowhere near enough young doctors to replace them, let alone increase their numbers sufficiently to cover a full seven-day service. My practice has seen one young GP resign and head to Canada with another highly promising candidate to follow him.
The remedy is simple: significantly increase the current risible £80 annual fee per patient, remove the huge mountain of unnecessary bureaucracy, treat these highly skilled professionals with the respect that they deserve and stop inept ministers’ incessant meddling.
Dr Richard Holman
Barnstaple, Devon
Theresa the Too-Timid?
I quite understand Andrew Rawnsley’s problem in finding a positive historical template for Theresa May (“Could Mrs May the control freak become the Queen of Misrule?”, Comment); clearly looking at a capable ruler like Elizabeth I is barking up the wrong tree. Ivan Rogers’s picture of her preparation for Brexit brings Ethelred the Unready to mind, while her feeble handling of the NHS crisis appears to be a combination of Henry the Impotent of Castile and the last Carolingian king of France, Louis the Do-Nothing.
Of female rulers, the most striking comparison is the ill-fated Byzantine empress regent, Maria of Antioch. A woman who came to power unexpectedly and suddenly to a declining empire beset by powerful external enemies and internal rivals, she struggled to impose her authority from the outset, as ambitious relatives plotted against her, using xenophobic attacks on European immigrant communities as their calling card.
Her rule marked the start of a period of political instability and fierce decline for the empire, during which northern provinces were able to secede and become independent kingdoms; ultimately, the Latins got their own back by intervening in the internal squabbles, leading to the conquest of the empire for themselves. When you visit Venice today, you can see the quadriga stolen from Constantinople adorning St Mark’s itself.
Stephen Davies
Beckenham
Planning issues and Brexit
Lauren Ellis (“An alternative view of Brexit”; Letters) wrote about those who voted Remain “who are incapable or unwilling to see the issue from any point of view other than their own privileged and narrow-minded one”. I could equally throw back the same accusation to those who voted to leave.
I worked as a town planner in Teesside and then until retirement two years ago in Hartlepool, which voted so vehemently to leave the European Union. In my job, there only one purpose: economic development. Teesside was once a prosperous place but has suffered a long decline. Grants from the EU towards infrastructure, environmental improvements and training often overcame the government’s reluctance to invest. Hartlepool and other areas like it that voted to leave the EU will now suffer the most.
Peter Graves
Stockton on Tees, Cleveland
All roads lead to Stratford
Robert McCrum’s article on Heather Wolfe’s archive work (“How ‘Sherlock of the library’ cracked the case of Shakespeare’s identity”, In Focus) misrepresents the argument made against Shakespeare’s authorship of his plays. However well-intentioned, his misappropriation of Wolfe’s measured claims is in danger of buttressing the theories of the “anti-Stratfordians”.
Contrary to his assertion, while Baconians, Oxfordians and Marlovians disagree about much, they all accept that Shakespeare the player existed and that he came from Stratford. They merely state that someone else wrote the plays attributed to him. The family application for a coat of arms is not only accepted by them, it is embraced as evidence in support of their claims, their argument being that such a vainglorious act is incompatible with the sensitive disposition of a great poet.
Far from dismantling the anti-Stratfordian argument, Wolfe’s discovery is perhaps most notable for revealing that as late as 1602, Shakespeare was understood to be a player and not a playmaker. It is easy to imagine how this nugget could, and probably will, be integrated into anti-Stratfordian mythology.
To do so would, of course, be fallacious. Arcane references in ancient documents can be twisted and turned until they slot into the most obtuse reasoning. The answer to the authorship question is better drawn from an understanding of how the plays would have been written, rehearsed and performed and the straightforward and unambiguous testimony of his contemporaries. It is a route that quickly leads to a clear and obvious answer.
There are, in any case, already many good reasons for dismissing the claims made for alternative candidates, not least that by the time Macbeth and The Tempest were written two of them were dead. By purporting to have finally found proof, McCrum only dignifies and resuscitates a redundant debate.
David Vass
Diss, Norfolk
