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Most Guardian letter writers – cool or smug – go unpublished.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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