The Afghan toll
Sir: Jonathan Foreman’s article (‘Britain’s forgotten casualties’, 22 August) highlights how the focus on the death toll in Afghanistan eclipses a much wider human and economic cost arising from those many seriously injured soldiers who will require help for the rest of their lives. If you include those who are subsequently affected, often long after their service, by mental health problems arising from what they have endured, the human and economic costs are even greater.
However, while it is clear that the government needs to ensure that it responds effectively to this legacy arising from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, it should not be assumed that those soldiers are abandoned at the point where state provision ends.
In addition to the great work done by Help for Heroes and the other military charities, the regiments and corps of the army play an active role in supporting individual soldiers and their dependents who need help. Indeed many who work in this area would argue that some functions are more efficiently carried out by the charity sector and by those who know the individuals and their circumstances better.
As a former Welsh Guards officer who closely follows the fortunes of my regiment as they serve with such distinction in Afghanistan, I know that the regiment treats each and every soldier as a member of a close family, and therefore takes its responsibilities to serving or former Welsh Guardsmen and their dependents very seriously. Like many other regiments, we are planning ahead to ensure that we can do everything possible to care for those affected directly or indirectly by current operations. In the long term this will require considerable funds, so we have founded the Welsh Guards Afghanistan Appeal (see www.welshguardsappeal.com) due to launch on 7 September, in order to bear our responsibilities effectively. All contributions will be very gratefully received.
Harry Wynne-Williams
London SW12
Hannan’s right on the NHS
Sir: How absurd it is that David Cameron feels he has to marginalise Daniel Hannan for expressing his views on the NHS (Leading article, 22 August). We all know, as surely does Dave, that he is right. The only inference is that he believes that no matter how ridiculously sclerotic, overblown and bureaucratically morassed the NHS is, when it comes to this particular sacred cow, the electorate will not wear anything less than maintenance of the status quo. Power to the patients? Not sure about this. Having worked in the health service, I have seen how much time is wasted on serial abusers of the system, all of whom have paid their taxes (even if they have not) and know their rights. What is needed is a fundamental reassessment of priorities, a return to first principles with consequent major reductions in elective treatments and the removal of swaths of quangos and bureaucrats. However, I fear that making any such reform a manifesto commitment might indeed be political suicide. No, I fear Dave is right — and heaven help us all. Perhaps we are a nation who will get by on sentimentality, bureaucracy and selling each other services we do not want. I would complain but the customer service number is a call centre.
Philip Brooksby
Penarth
Time trivialises all
Sir: Kate Williams’s lament about the trivialisation of atrocities in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (‘We are forgetting how to be guilty about the past, 22 August) brought to mind a line from Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. A sleazy film producer expounds on his notion of appropriate subject matter, declaring, ‘Comedy equals Tragedy plus Time’. He goes on to explain that jokes about the Titanic would be unpalatable just after the event, yet a gas generations afterwards. Well, enough time has elapsed that we can now issue disrespectful films about the ‘Good War’ of popular 20th-century myth. Time marches on and trivialises all in its wake.
J. Wroblewski
Vancouver, Canada
Guns and poses
Sir: Fraser Nelson is doubtless right when he tells us that Mr Cameron has not gone deer-stalking on his Jura holiday, being ‘perhaps mindful of how photographs of him in tweeds and with a shotgun would go down on the urban election trail’ (Politics, 22 August). I would add only that the sight of him going after deer with a shotgun, rather than a rifle, would go down even worse with rural voters. Meanwhile Roger Alton, writing about the ‘Harlequins Bloodgate’ scandal, asserts that any ‘right-minded bogus cheat would have just limped off with a bogus hamstring strain’. The Harlequins officials and young Tom Williams, the player in question, may not be the brightest of folk, but at least they know the regulations concerning replacements. A player who has already been substituted, as the Harlequins fly-half Nick Evans had been, may return to the field to replace a player who has suffered a blood injury, but not one who leaves the field on account of any other injury. So if Williams had faked a hamstring strain, Evans would not have been permitted to replace him.
Allan Massie
Selkirk, Scotland
Will Dave do better?
Sir: Thank you for publishing Bryan Forbes’s excellent article on the vindictive minds of a bankrupt Labour party (‘It takes a vindictive mind to tax a lake’, 22 August). Sadly, I feel that Cameron’s ‘gang’, once in office, will prove equally incompetent. They show no true conservative conviction or ideas. Thatcher is vilified, Churchill long forgotten, and anyone who questions the status quo is expelled.
Malcolm Headley
West Wales
Cat flap
Sir: I wanted to cheer when I read Rod Liddle’s article (‘Let’s hear it for the python’, 15 August). Unfortunately, the law as it stands is firmly on the cat owner’s side. From my garden I have lost bank voles, wrens and dunnocks since the cat owners moved in next door, and I have no legal redress. Where are my rights?
Fred Coppenhall
Northwich, Cheshire
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