Cartoon by John Sadler

• ONE of the most chilling news items I’ve read appeared in your paper concerning a planned reduction in routine operations being offered by the NHS, (North London NHS to stop hip replacements and tonsillectomies, March 14).

Certain of these including, knee and hip replacements, cataract surgery and injections for low back pain, will be offered only if patients meet “a higher threshold of pain”. What sort of monsters are being created by the NHS bureaucracy?

The elderly are disproportionately represented among those needing this sort of treatment. Contrary to the popular illusion, old people are not all rich. A high proportion are unpaid carers and volunteers themselves who have paid taxes for the NHS all of their lives.

We will now have to trawl our fellow humans to find people prepared to be so cruel as to say to old men or women: “I’m afraid you can’t have a hip replacement, because although you’re in pain it’s not painful enough for our threshold. Try again next year if the pain gets worse – and, of course, you must be still alive to qualify.”

EF WILSON
NW1