Martha Gill’s article about the ravages of increased cocaine usage and purity raises important questions, and gives data that shows our thinking on the whys and hows of the use and treatment of the drug are out of date (“Britons are dying in a blizzard of cheap cocaine. Why is so little being done to save them?”). It is strange, though, that the article does not mention the word “addiction”, even while questioning why it might be that rates of usage remain so high among gen X users in their 40s and 50s.
Cocaine remains a stubbornly glamorous and seductive drug and for many people its highly addictive qualities lie hidden in plain sight. Many are the “casual” or “occasional” users partaking every weekend for years on end, claiming they can stop at any time, while glaringly unaware that they haven’t yet and won’t do anytime soon.
George Prowse
Cranbrook, Kent
Doctors are right to protest
Re “Stop punishing doctors who take part in climate protests, regulator told”: according to the GMC, trust in doctors can be put at risk when they fail to comply with the law. However, this law, which suppresses protest, was only recently brought in by the last government and needs to be repealed. I fear that by persecuting doctors who follow their conscience, the GMC is itself in danger of bringing the medical profession disrepute. If this law had been passed in the last century, women might still not have the vote!
Dr Els van Ooijen
Bristol
Get Barnsley back to work
Richard Partington’s report on Barnsley did not specifically mention obesity (“The sickness trap: how Barnsley has tried to fight back against worklessness”). However, with 38% of the population of Barnsley obese, we could share ideas from EU-funded work we did with obese and overweight unemployed people in former mining areas in Kent and northern France, using food production as a way to increase awareness and engagement, reduce weight, increase self-esteem and improve employability via new skills and work experience.
Working with local authorities and voluntary organisations, we implemented a model to reduce unemployment and obesity. More than 6,000 participants benefited from the activities offered, increasing their wellbeing, self-confidence and self-motivation. They became less socially isolated and more engaged within their local communities; 61% lost weight and 79% moved up a stage of the employability ladder. We also developed a practical guide for employers to better support job seekers. It raised awareness of the prejudices and discrimination that overweight or obese people often face during recruitment processes and in the workplace.
Christine Hancock, director, C3 Collaborating for Health
London NW1
Special needs not an illness
Sonia Sodha rightly outlines a disgraceful situation where many parents cannot get appropriate education for their children (“What sort of society rations support for children with special learning needs?”). Many more parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) are now forced to demand statutory education health and care (EHC) plans involving diagnosis and prescription.
However, unmet educational need is not an illness that requires “treatment”. Learning difficulties do not exist within the child. Special educational needs arise when children are expected to learn inappropriate things in inappropriate ways. SEN is about the curriculum – what children are asked to learn and how they are expected to learn it.
Comprehensive schools have become academies modelled on neoliberal free market competition. Central government largely controls what children learn and to some extent how they learn it, for example children must be taught to read using phonics. Local authorities have little power to change the system, to innovate or develop imaginative provision in the community where children live, such as specialist units in mainstream schools or specialist support and advice to enable access to the curriculum for children with SEN. More and more EHC plans, which are steadily increasing the numbers of children in special schools, where previously, numbers were falling, are an impossible, expensive and inappropriate response to the needs of the vast majority of children with special educational needs.
Dr Robin Richmond
Bromyard, Herefordshire
Compassion in death
In Women of Westminster, Rachel Reeves’ book about the MPs who changed politics, she tells how in 1923 Nancy Astor brought the first private member’s bill sponsored by a female MP. It banned the sale of alcohol to children under 18. The legislation is still in effect today, despite significant opposition at the time that the bill would prove to be a “slippery slope” towards prohibition.
Over a century later, the same flawed argument is being used to try to stymie law reform that would also reduce great harm, as well as giving people choice on how much suffering they must endure at the end of life (“The perils of assisted dying”).
Kim Leadbeater MP follows Astor’s lead in bringing a private member’s bill that is based on evidence and grounded in compassion; opening up a long-overdue opportunity for MPs to discuss how we die in this country. MPs must back this bill on 29 November so that detailed scrutiny can follow.
Sarah Wootton, chief executive, Dignity in Dying and Compassion in Dying, London W1
Kate Bush belongs to us all
I am a Kate Bush fan (“Babooshkas rejoice! Kate Bush is every woman’s teenage soul – which is why men don’t get her”). I am also a man. I am friends with over half a dozen avid Kate Bush fans. They are also all men. I was first introduced to Bush’s music in 1978 by my father, who was and still is a fan. He is also a man.
Many of Bush’s songs are specifically and sympathetically about men (This Woman’s Work, Pi, Cloudbusting). Others (Babooshka, Deeper Understanding, Running Up That Hill) concern the feelings of women and men. Most of her musical collaborators (Peter Gabriel, Elton John) have been men. She grew up with brothers. She gets men, and men therefore get her.
Barbara Ellen offers no evidence that men cannot understand Bush’s songs or music, save one comment about sexism in the music industry. The only man or woman who doesn’t get her is one who hasn’t listened.
Milton Goldring
Isle Of Skye
When they played the video of Wuthering Heights on Swap Shop all those years ago, I remember looking at my brother to see if he too was being changed by this strange newness on the screen. By the end of the song, I had already given my 13-year-old soul and all musical allegiance to Kate. She could do no wrong. I was aware she was quirky to the point where maybe I should feel embarrassed, but on the other hand she exists in another world where emotions are stronger and vital to daily existence.
So I absolutely agree with you that Kate stole teenage souls and I never wanted mine back. Plus she seems to be the gentlest of people who somehow harnessed within her a rage of talent and feeling.
Although, obviously, she is my soul mate, not yours.
Heather Button
Shrewsbury
