You report (7 November) that Barts Health trust’s takeover of a fully equipped, state-of-the-art private hospital is “thought to be the first time the NHS has inherited ready-to-use health facilities in this way”. However, in 2002, for £37.5m, the Scottish executive bought a large private hospital in Clydebank, built in 1994 at a cost of £180m by a US healthcare firm, for the NHS. Now the Golden Jubilee University National hospital, it delivers 57,500 procedures a year. Not a bad bargain, I’d say.
Adam Rennie
Edinburgh
• Polly Toynbee provides an excellent background to recent events in one of Britain’s foremost national treasures (If you care about the BBC, stand up and defend it: this could be the beginning of the end, 10 November). The coincidence of the huge success of The Celebrity Traitors happening almost simultaneously with the real-life situation being played out in the BBC boardroom is nothing short of tragic.
Gerry Devine
Ickenham, London
• David Edwards Hulme (Letters, 7 November) wants us to spare a thought for the residents of Epstein Road in Thamesmead, London, but they can always think of Brian Epstein, who gave us the Beatles.
Sue Leyland
Hunmanby, North Yorkshire
• At the risk of sounding “smug” (Letters, 9 November), my first letter to the Guardian was published over 47 years ago, on 2 August 1978 (Letters, 10 November).
Harvey Sanders
London
• Most Guardian letter writers – cool or smug – go unpublished.
Carol Walker
Sheffield
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